Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Lynne Hamilton]

I had no reason to expect a confidential document from Mr. Ullyatt. He was a trusted source, to move back to your virus analogy. I quickly opened the e-mail, saw it was from him, and didn't go back to it until many hours later in the day. At the end of the day, when I was printing stuff to clear my desk for the day, I quickly printed it, along with a number of other documents. I quickly did a scan and threw it in a drawer.

It never occurred to me that it would be an inappropriate document, that he would send me an inappropriate document, or that he would have an inappropriate document. Therefore, I reacted the way I did.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Again, just from a common-sense standpoint, I can tell you that from my perspective, at least, I won't print off an attachment unless I know what's in it. In other words, we receive many, many e-mails, many containing attachments, on a daily basis. I don't print off every e-mail I receive. I certainly don't print off every attachment I receive unless I know what's in the attachment and that it's worthy information, important information to me. Then I print it off, because I want a hard copy.

You say that you printed off the attachment but didn't know what was in it. You just went ahead and printed it off. I find that not only odd, but quite frankly a little unbelievable.

[Lynne Hamilton]

I printed off a number of documents that day. It had been a busy day in the office. A number of things had transpired. It was very busy. I had a number of e-mails I had responded to and some I had not gotten around to responding to. I was trying to clear my inbox for the day. I went through and clicked on attachments.

I take your counsel. Since then, I'm much more careful about what comes in through my inbox, I assure you.

I printed off those documents that day. They came to me on the printer. I started flipping through.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Would it be fair to say.... I don't want to interrupt you, Ms. Hamilton, but it seems like you're searching for words here. Would you say, then, or is it your contention, that it's a common practice of yours to print off attachments of e-mails without knowing what's in the attachments?

[Lynne Hamilton]

It's fair to say that would have happened on a number of occasions, yes.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Why do you print them off, then, without just opening them up and reading them on display on your monitor? Again, it just doesn't seem to make sense to me. Right?

If I want to know whether or not a document is worth my printing it off and retaining, I'll read the attachment and then make that determination. But you're saying to this committee that you just routinely print attachments—not open them, just print them—without knowing what's in them to begin with, and then not really bothering to read them after you print them off. It just seems incredulous.

[Lynne Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, perhaps because of the BlackBerry age, we spend a bit of time looking at e-mails very quickly. What I can suggest is, because I had not had a chance to look at most things during that day, at some point I think I've looked at it--at some point, right? I've at least had a passing glance. I knew what I was looking at. I knew it came from a trusted person; it wasn't going to be something I wasn't expecting or.... So when I went to print attachments, I just was gathering them up for the day, because sometimes it's very hard to look at attachments on BlackBerrys, and you can't always open them. So I just printed off a number of e-mails from the day, agendas, other things....

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

You mentioned that you considered Mr. Ullyatt to be a trusted source, and I'm not going to—

[Lynne Hamilton]

When I say “trusted source”, I mean in terms of your virus analogy, meaning only open items as—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

All right. Fair comment.

[Lynne Hamilton]

Okay, I'm sorry. I—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

No, no, that's fine. A fair comment.

But because of that, if he was a trusted source or someone you had known, also you obviously knew where he worked; he worked for a member of Parliament who was a member of the finance committee and you took the time to print off an attachment from an e-mail that he sent to you. But you're still contending that even though you knew him, you knew him well, and he sent you an e-mail, you printed off the attachment, but you didn't read it at the time you received it and printed it off?

[Lynne Hamilton]

I gathered up the printed documents of the day. On my desk, I had a number of items. I quickly went through them. I thumbed through the first few pages, took a look, realized I didn't have a lot of time, put them in a locked drawer, went on a teleconference, and then left the office and locked my door.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

How much time, Chair...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Ten seconds for question and answer.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

That's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you. We'll leave it there.

Madame DeBellefeuille, are you taking the first round?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Hamilton. We asked you to appear before us again because this is a very serious issue.

[Lynne Hamilton]

There is no translation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll just wait.

All right? We're starting you over.

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

We are here to study the question of privilege relating to the disclosure of a confidential draft report on the pre-budget consultations of the Standing Committee on Finance. This is a very serious matter and that is why we asked you to appear again. I share my colleagues’ opinion that your testimony at the last meeting was not really credible. We want to give you the opportunity to better explain yourself this time. As I was listening to you, I felt that my opinion on your testimony would not change, but I’m still going to ask you some questions in order to clarify a few of your comments.

You are an experienced lobbyist. You worked in politics for a minister from Ontario and you were chief of staff. We do acknowledge your considerable experience in politics. You are now a lobbyist and you are working for a well-known company. I just have a lot of questions about the way you handled the information Mr. Ullyatt sent you.

You received your first e-mail at 8:30 a.m. and, since we were able to read it, you have exchanged some information with Mr. Ullyatt, including some very affectionate comments like “I love you”. We know you trusted him. You told us that you developed a deep friendship for him, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

So, at 8:30 a.m., you received an e-mail, but you did not read the attachment with the report. You explained that you were busy taking your children to the bus stop, daycare, and so on. Four hours later, you sent him an e-mail, but you still had not read the attachment with the report, though the subject of the e-mail was “Draft Report”. You automatically assumed that the report was public and you said that you would read it later.

Here’s why I really have some doubts, Ms. Hamilton. You are a lobbyist and you are paid to send your clients privileged information that you manage to get. You had a public report in your hands. You said you held on to it because you were busy; you didn’t send it, you didn’t read it, you just kept it.

How can we believe that an experienced lobbyist would hold back a report that she assumed was public and would just keep it to herself? What is your explanation?

None of us around this table find this very credible.

[Lynne Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, I have a small point of order.

The honourable member indicated that as a lobbyist my job is to pass on privileged information that I have attained. That is not my job as a lobbyist; it is to give good counsel and wise counsel to my clients to ensure they are able to navigate the waters of government.

What I can tell you is in the management of my e-mails that day, the very fact that I believed I'd received a publicly available document I think bolsters my claim that I believed it was not time-sensitive. I believed I had time to review it if it was a document that was inappropriate or confidential. Others acted in very different ways when they knew it to be a different document. I did not act in that manner, I believe, because I believed it was publicly available information and therefore I didn't feel it was time-sensitive.

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

Ms. Hamilton, what you had in your hands was a confidential draft report on pre-budget consultations. There was information in the report that you could have used to advise your clients. What doesn’t make sense is that we have repeatedly asked Mr. Ullyatt why he chose the lobbyists in question to distribute and send the report to. But we can't figure it out. I think it is virtually impossible for you not to know that this report was confidential and that you could use it to give good counsel and wise counsel to your clients, as you so well put it. I have trouble understanding that. If I were your boss, I would ask you why you did not diligently deal with such valuable information so that your customers could benefit from it. In my view, that’s where things don't add up.

Another question comes to mind. If you received this information from a good friend, who happens to be the assistant to a member on the Standing Committee on Finance, and you decided not to do anything with this information, why would Mr. Ullyatt send it to you in the first place? I wonder if it was because you had, as Mr. Mulcair publicly pointed out, business ties with Mr. Ullyatt's companies.

Is it not safe to assume that, besides having the privilege of being in the possession of a confidential pre-budget report, your business relationship would benefit Mr. Ullyatt, since contracts are awarded to those private companies? Was the idea behind all this “I give you something and you give me something in return”? Is your company a client of one of Mr. Ullyatt's companies, RU Thinking and Bestmail.ca, whose names have been mentioned publicly? Are we to understand that there is a link to why Mr. Ullyatt sent you the confidential draft report on pre-budget consultations?

[Lynne Hamilton]

I cannot speak for Mr. Ullyatt as to why he sent me a copy of this document. I can't.

I can tell you that none of my clients are clients of any of Mr. Ullyatt's companies. I can tell you that the relationship I have with Mr. Ullyatt is nothing more than a friendship; there is no business relationship.

You indicated something about precious information or confidential information. The information contained in the final pre-budget report is important to clients. I would not suggest that it is time-sensitive. It needs thorough analysis. Days may go by where we would go through the document at length and pull out what may be salient for certain clients. But in terms of the confidential report and wanting to act quickly, as others in fact did, again, it bolsters my claim that I believed I had the final document that was publicly available, and therefore my actions bolster the fact that I didn't believe I had—in your words—precious information or confidential information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Christopherson, for seven minutes, please.