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

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You are done.

Mr. Lukiwski.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity here on a question. Ms. Ratansi opened up questioning by asking you if you had been advised or coached by anybody prior to your appearance here. I note with interest and I believe I'm correct in identifying Mr. David Pratt, former Liberal defence minister, and it seems that you've been having conversations. Have you been advised or been coached by Mr. Pratt?

[Lynne Hamilton]

I will announce for the committee that David Pratt is the most recent addition to my company.

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

Ah, I see. I guess congratulations are in order then.

Let's get back to the issue at hand here. And again, I'm having a lot of difficulty. I think Mr. Christopherson and Ms. DeBellefeuille have also expressed some amazement at some of the things you're saying, just from a common-sense perspective. I have to keep going back to that.

Please just educate me, then, because it doesn't make sense to me that when you read something that says draft document—and you said you thumbed through it and put it in your desk, but you did thumb through it to the point where you recognized it was a draft document—obviously, when you're thumbing through it, you must have gleaned something from the document, enough to alert you that this is to deal with a report from the Standing Committee on Finance. Am I wrong here? When you said you thumbed through the document, what information did you glean from that, and what made you think that it was innocuous, that it shouldn't need any closer examination, particularly, as David has said, since the words “peek” and “draft” and all this stuff are included in that? I'm trying to get my head around your thinking.

[Lynne Hamilton]

When we talked about knowing what the document is called, that is what it is called on the attachment. That's what's in the BlackBerry when you open the document; what I dictated to you is what's in the BlackBerry subject line. In terms of the actual draft, it's been three months. I'm not sure I barely made it through the table of contents before realizing just how much work this was going to be and that I didn't have time to do it that day.

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

Even the table of contents—perhaps particularly the table of contents—would have alerted you that the document was one that was of some sensitivity and it was a report from the standing committee. That alone should have alerted you. No?

[Lynne Hamilton]

Remember, I believed I was getting a publicly available piece of information. When you—

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

Again, not to interrupt—and I hate doing this, but I have to get this clear—in your role as a fairly accomplished, fairly seasoned lobbyist, you're saying that you didn't realize that the Standing Committee on Finance, doing pre-budget consultations, which you must have been aware of.... You follow these things closely. You're saying you thought it was publicly available? If you follow these issues, you must have then concluded that the final report was tabled in Parliament. This was your job, right? You're supposed to be aware of these things so you can advise your clients accordingly. You're saying you didn't know this was a draft report—that's your statement—which means you must have believed that the final report had been tabled in Parliament.

[Lynne Hamilton]

Correct.

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

Even though it's your job to know these things, you're saying you weren't aware that the final report had not been tabled—an important pre-budget consultation document from the Standing Committee on Finance, which the Minister of Finance will use quite routinely to perhaps formulate budgetary policy and decisions.

You, who should be aware of all this—and I'm sure you do a good job on behalf of your clients—are saying you weren't aware of this. You didn't know it was not a final copy. In other words, if you're stating here that you believed the information contained in that attachment was publicly available, you must have also concluded that the final draft of the report of the Standing Committee on Finance had been tabled in Parliament.

Do you make those mistakes often?

[Lynne Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, let me clarify.

I recognize the importance of the pre-budget report. I believed the House had tabled the report. I believed that's what Mr. Ullyatt had sent me. I was expecting the work of the committee to have wrapped up around that timeframe and I believed that what I got was the final report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lukiwski. I'm very sorry, but your time is now completed too.

Monsieur Paquette.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

I see in the e-mails we received that, on November 8, 2010, you requested a meeting with Ms. Block for your heart and stroke clients. Could you tell us whether you met with Ms. Block on a number of occasions and what was the purpose of those meetings?

[Lynne Hamilton]

I had not met with Mrs. Block personally. My clients did not meet with Mrs. Block. There was no meeting.

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

Ms. Hamilton, I won’t trouble you with my questions. I have no further questions. I feel like I’m wasting my time. And I don’t like to waste my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Christopherson, do you have anything in this round?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

The question and answer is becoming circular now. Unless there's new information, my sense is we're just going to keep going round and round. The next step would have to be to increase the pressure, and I'm not convinced this is the right place for that. This is a private citizen, nonetheless, once removed from the action. I think we've grilled—at least I have as far as I'm comfortable in this setting. Anything further would need to be in a court of law with rules and letting people go hammer and tongs and subpoena every single document to back these things up.

I have to say, though, with the greatest of respect to our witness, I'm still having some difficulty accepting the chronology as presented. It just seems to fly in the face of a lot of basic human nature. But I don't feel I have the information or the procedural tools to go any further.

I relinquish whatever time is left, Chair. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We have completed our second round.

I'll take any one-offs. We've got about five minutes left in the hour.

Ms. Foote.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm trying to get some clarification here.

In his testimony, when Mr. Ullyatt said the “I heart you” e-mail he sent to you is based on your appreciation of his efforts to give you inside information, what's your understanding of inside information? That's only his understanding of what you were thanking him for.

[Lynne Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, I'm not aware of the transaction between Mr. Ullyatt and the committee. I can't recant exactly what he said.

I can say Mr. Ullyatt would have no idea what I was thinking when he sent me that e-mail, and I'm not sure why he would have answered a question about what I was thinking.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

That's what's so interesting about this, because there's a relationship here between you and Mr. Ullyatt and there's contradictory testimony. The committee is having some real difficulty here believing what you're telling us. We either have to believe you or Mr. Ullyatt, which puts us in a very difficult situation.

I look at your opening statement and you say your document came in at 8:38 a.m. You glanced at your BlackBerry and noted that it had come from your friend. At 12:37 you sent him back your e-mail that said “I heart you”. Two hours later you and Mr. Ullyatt exchanged e-mails on a personal matter that had nothing to do with the report. At 3:20 in the afternoon he called you and you had a brief telephone chat on a matter completely unrelated to the report. So Mr. Ullyatt knows he has sent you a confidential document. You expect us to believe that at no point in time, either in the e-mail two hours later or your telephone conversation, did he say to you “Did you get the report?”

[Lynne Hamilton]

I don't recall him ever saying “Did you get the report?” He obviously knew I got the report when I sent back my original response. I don't think he can speak to what I thought I got when I got that report. I can tell you I thought it was publicly available. I thought the “FINA” was “FINAL”, not “FINA”.

I can't speak to what Mr. Russell thought. What I can tell you are the facts, and the facts are this. I received a document. I thanked him for the document. I later printed off the document with a number of other things. I flipped through it, realized it was going to be an awful lot of work, and then I put it in the drawer for the next day when I first analyzed it.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Okay. How long have you been a lobbyist not to know that FINA is Finance? Did you just think that the “L” was missing on the word, that you thought it was “FINAL”?

[Lynne Hamilton]

On a busy day, on a BlackBerry, when you're putting the kids on the bus, you'll have to give me a little bit of leeway.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Did you ever work on the Hill?