Evidence of meeting #127 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was emails.
A video is available from Parliament.
6:30 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I'm aware as far as what I have heard at committee.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Do you believe that the witnesses we've heard from, particularly Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, provided honest and truthful testimony?
6:30 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
No. There are many cases, in terms of the allegations specifically made against me, and some of them extremely hurtful. One comes to mind: that I faked a heart attack.
My health situation is nobody's business, first of all. It's personal and it's private. It's not something that I wanted shared. My heart attack is well documented. My cardiac disease is well documented. I'm followed by a cardiologist, and then to sit here and imply that I faked a heart attack, I would say that's the most extreme version of lying that I can think of.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Mr. Doan, are you being investigated? Do you know if the RCMP is investigating you?
6:30 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I have not been contacted by the RCMP.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
You are aware that Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald have had some investigations. They've had some disciplinary action. You're aware that members of this committee decided to go out and beyond the scope of this committee directly deal with them during an investigation by the Auditor General, the ombudsman and, of course, CBSA.
Do you feel that it's an obstruction of the investigation? Do you feel that it's putting at risk, ultimately, the truth that we're trying to get down to?
6:30 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I couldn't opine on whether that's an obstruction. I do wonder why certain things are occurring the way they are, and I wonder about the flow of information from these witnesses, perhaps some privilege that they have of sharing information, which I do not, or that they are privy to the information. I couldn't opine on whether that's an obstruction of justice. That's not really my domain of expertise.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Your domain, though, is around IT, and you've been talking at length today about losing.... You've talked about the corrupt file that has gone missing, but you have already stated that the file is available either on the cloud or on the mainframe or something.
Please advise this committee what is required now to retrieve the missing file that exists. It doesn't exist on your computer, but it exists elsewhere. What is required to retrieve that?
6:30 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
To my knowledge, CBSA still has my old laptop and my new laptop, including any files on there. There are quite a number of recovery services available, either through the private sector or through others, to recover files and hard drives that have even been burned.
What services CBSA has undertaken so far, I can't speak to and I'm not aware of; although, I know there's an investigation. I think, more importantly, as I said at the beginning, these emails do not exist on only this laptop, but anybody I sent an email to or anybody cc'd would still have copies. Anybody who sent me emails that they would like to provide as evidence, even if they were presumably gone from my laptop, could provide it and say, “I sent this email on this date to Mr. Doan”, and all these other people cc'd would have a copy as well. There are a number of measures possible as well as some of the backups that would be available on Shared Services' servers because the email was not managed by CBSA.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Then, if we were to seek out and reference that file in the name of MacDonald, Doan, could we find it? Is it available to us?
6:35 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I would refer that to CBSA, where they are on the investigation.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
6:35 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Doan, I am going to come back to my earlier question.
What do you think about Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald saying they were made scapegoats to protect people, including you? What is your reaction to those allegations?
6:35 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
To reiterate what I said to another member of the committee, given everything that has gone on in terms of my health, my reputation and my career, and all the terrible things I have read on social media, I do not really feel protected.
That being said, why would they be made scapegoats to protect me? I don't know why I would be protected more than any other public servant. I am a member of the public service. I don't see why the agency or the public service would protect me more than someone else.
I acted in good faith and I don't know whether that is the case for them. If they are being targeted or scapegoated, I could not tell you why.
6:35 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you.
According to excerpts from conversations, GC Strategies told Botler AI that the public servants protected themselves because they had compromising information about one another that could bring them all down. I think that is more or less why Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald say they are being scapegoated.
Do you have compromising information—mud, if I may say that—on Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald, or do you think those people were friends and colleagues?
6:35 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I hired Mr. MacDonald myself, and I promoted him. I also gave Mr. Utano a promotion, after that. I would not have done that if I had not had a high opinion of their skills and their integrity.
Before the allegations that were made last fall, I had a lot of respect for those individuals. No, I never had any mud on them, nor would I have looked for any. They were colleagues, not friends or family. Our relationship was professional. Maybe we talked about our children, but we often just talked about work.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
6:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Chair, if we counted the number of hours we've talked about this particular email file, I think it would be fairly significant, and yet this question of where the emails are still hangs out there.
If I understand your testimony correctly, Mr. Doan, the backup of your emails lives on a Shared Services server somewhere. Is that correct?
6:35 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes.
6:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So you had a problem with the corruption of your computer. I think everyone around this table can relate to that, because at some point in our lives we've had something similar happen. It's very frustrating, but it does seem as though in this case you solved the problem.
Am I correct in stating that all those emails are now back on your new computer and have been restored?
I see people shaking their heads. That's not their understanding.
6:35 p.m.
Chief Technology Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
As I mentioned, this is being investigated. Whether they were able to recover them either from backups from Shared Services or through recovery services on the hard drive, I couldn't speak to. To my knowledge, Shared Services, which provides email services for a number of departments. does have backups. They have backups of emails, and they have backups of exchange servers. So there would be different services available to receive still.
6:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It just seems to me to be a non-issue. If the committee is serious about getting copies of the emails, all we have to do is order the production of the emails from Shared Services, from wherever the server lives, and they'll be compelled to produce them. It seems as simple as that.
Perhaps we can talk more about whether that's necessary and whether that's something the committee wants to pursue, but it does seem as though we've spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out the personal IT travails of one individual.
Mr. Chair, how many seconds do I have left here?
