Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 16th, 2010

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I did not ask Mr. Ullyatt to send that report to the Shaw account. I asked him to send me the report. He responded and confirmed with me that he had received the report and had printed it and put it in a binder for me. He also informed me, “I can send it to your home e-mail”, and I e-mailed back and said, “No, send it to “blockk9”, which is my MP e-mail address.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Therefore, really, Mr. Ullyatt has taken us down the wrong path.

My question then is, do you have any idea whether he printed any more reports and sent them out to anybody other than those five lobbyists?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

To the best of my knowledge, after having had IT check their backup files for my computer, for Emrys' computer, and for Mr. Ullyatt's computer, those were the only e-mails that were sent.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But how would we know? If you only gave a limit of two days and we do not even know what he did prior to that, and the heading was “Finance”, it was a very limited review of the e-mails.

Why wouldn't you allow a detailed review by IT so you can assure yourself that this hasn't happened? If you're talking about breach of privilege and you really want to respect the institution, then you should allow that to happen.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will briefly answer that.

I did have IT services do a check of their backup files for my computer and Emrys' computer for 30 days. I did not feel I needed to go beyond that time because the report only came at a certain time of the day. Less than 24 hours later, my office had been secured, so he would not have had access.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Ms. Ratansi.

Mr. Menzies, your five minutes, please.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Block.

Please forgive me if I slip and call you “Kelly”, because you and I work together on the finance committee. Everyone around this table needs to understand how strong a member you've been on that committee for us.

I appreciate the fact that the chair tries to keep bringing it back to what happened and, most importantly, how we can make sure this doesn't happen again.

From everything you've said, and from everything I've read, you've done everything within your power to apologize for someone else's mistake, and I'm just not sure what else you could have done.

Going back to the finance committee, we listened to an awful lot of witnesses there, and I just want to share with the rest of the people here the fact that Mr. Ullyatt may have written only one question for you. I watch you at committee writing your own questions as the witnesses give their testimony. So I guess I'm surprised that he even wrote one question for you, but I think that people here and the people listening need to understand the fundamental role you play in our finance committee, and most importantly, of course, in representing your constituents of Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.

I'm sure all of us will be happy to get out of here and back home for Christmas—and I understand your son is coming back from Australia. So enjoy your Christmas with your son.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

It's unfortunate we're going through a bit of a witch hunt here.

Mr. Proulx suggested he would know, he implied he knows, what his staff is doing every second of every working hour.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

No, I didn't.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Yes, you did.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Please, through me. That will be good.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Through you, Mr. Chair, he cannot decide what I think, and I never implied what he is saying I implied.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm not sure what rule you'd like me to enforce.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Would you please correct him?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I don't think I'll let him carry on with his question.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

I accept the correction because I recognize we do not know what our staff is doing minute by minute. When we're in Ottawa, they're in the riding office. When we're in the riding office, they're here in Ottawa.

I want to try to pursue...when you ask if anything good comes out of this. I respect your answer to Mr. Lukiwski's question, that any future draft or confidential documents coming out of any committee, whether it's a private member's bill, the drafting of a private member's bill, not be leaked before it's tabled in the House of Commons either.

How do we do that? Do we send it just to the MP account or do we put it in a sealed envelope and hand deliver it? I get your thoughts on this. Where do we go from here? This is what we're here to find out. I'm quite confident you did everything you could. You couldn't have stopped this person from breaching your privileges as a member of Parliament, but how do we stop this in the future?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Chair, I think that's a very good question. Mr. Lukiwski suggested those types of reports simply go to the member of Parliament. I've served on other boards and committees where documents are given to the members in numbered envelopes. Each document is numbered and they are turned in at the end of a meeting. I think this is a very complex issue. There could be a number of solutions, but I think in this day, with the type of technology we use, it becomes harder and harder to ensure that these kinds of documents remain secure.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

Just going back to your proactive response to this, I think it was admirable that you took it upon yourself to contact all the members of the finance committee, and I understand they were very thankful you had contacted them. I'm not asking for a chronology of the time but just their comments. Did they appreciate the fact that you were put in a very difficult position by your staff member?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Chair, throughout the day I did speak to nine of the 11 committee members other than me. They called me as they received the message to do so. I would have to say that all members of the committee were very reasonable in their response to what I was telling them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Menzies.

Madame DeBellefeuille, five minutes, please.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Block, I find your comments surprising in a number of respects. Was Mr. Ullyatt your only employee on Parliament Hill?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

No, he was not. Mr. Ullyatt was my executive assistant. I had hired a legislative assistant. I've always had two staff members in my Ottawa office at all times.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

As I said, I found certain aspects of your testimony surprising. You seem to have no idea what your assistant does either before or after work, which country club he belongs to with certain lobbyists and so forth. That is quite surprising. You share certain details of everyday life with an assistant. For example, my assistant's son had a tough time when he got his shot yesterday. It is common practice to share that kind of information. Professional relationship or not, you still know a little bit about what is happening in your assistant's personal life. That is even part of the job. It is part of being a good manager.

You said you were not aware that he went to the same church as Mr. Mains or the same country club as Mr. Egan, or that he owned two companies. That is rather surprising. So in terms of managing your staff, you were pretty far removed from them. When it came to Mr. Ullyatt, you did not have a close employee-manager relationship. But we are not talking about some big company, you had just two employees.

Ms. Block, some odd things seemed to be happening in your office, but apparently, you were not aware of any of them. That leads me to wonder about a number of things. I will not go so far as to comment on your management style, which would not be very polite, but the fact that you are so disconnected from the personal lives of both of your employees is rather surprising to me.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much for your question.

I did not know that Mr. Ullyatt attended church with Mr. Mains. I did know that Mr. Ullyatt attended church. I did not know that Tim Egan was a member of the Rideau Club, but I did know that Russell Ullyatt was a member of the club. I didn't ask Mr. Ullyatt who else were members of the club, or who he attended church with.

He was married recently. I was invited to his wedding. I knew his fiancée. I have met his mother.

There are things I do know, but when you ask if I knew that he attended church with Mr. Mains, I did not know that.