Evidence of meeting #37 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was public.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I had read some press that there was the potential of some ongoing. So you're not aware of any?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
It was mentioned that it is very difficult to establish perjury—we ran through some of the difficulties—and that this is quite incomplete. To have the entire encyclopedia, we'd have to go through the criminal investigations that have taken place and take a look at the testimony there.
What sort of timeframe would that require of the limited resources this committee has at its disposal?
4:05 p.m.
Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
As Mr. Tardi indicated earlier, there are other proceedings where testimony has been given under oath that may give further indication of how the testimony given here was false or untruthful. I suppose in a sense the advantage you have is that the committee was the first step, so all the other stuff came later and makes the comparisons easier.
Mr. O'Neal of the library might better estimate how much time this would take, depending on how far you want to stretch your inquiry, whether you want to include the testimony in these other venues or whether you want to limit it to a contrast between the committee and the Gomery inquiry. But it could take some time, admittedly.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Considering that this has never taken place in the past, and considering what the intention seems to be, we would probably want to have as fulsome material as possible. I understand there was a great amount of evidence presented during the various criminal trials and investigations.
Mr. O'Neal, can you give us any guesstimate of how much of your time this would entail?
4:10 p.m.
Brian O'Neal Committee Researcher
Mr. Chairman, I'm reluctant to give an exact estimate, but I can tell the committee that it took approximately five of us about three months to go through just the Gomery transcripts and this committee's transcripts, so it's quite a labour-intensive piece of work. Not only do we have to consider whether or not there's the discrepancy between the answers, but we have to make sure that the witnesses are being asked approximately the same question. So it is quite a bit of work and it would take awhile.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So there's a good chance we'd chew through a lot of the human resources we have at our disposal at this committee going through a process of, as Mr. Walsh referred to it, hanging a dead man. I'm not quite sure that it's the best use of our resources. There's a full public record of what transpired. Criminal cases have concluded.
Perhaps something that might help us before we potentially go down this, as it was also referred to, tortuous path is we could check the record to see how many people were actually sworn in, so that we at least know that that particular requirement was met. I think that would be helpful.
And then, just looking at what's already been presented, and with all respect—
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
With all respect to the amount of time that five staffers spent on this, on the very first page I notice that there are errors on this particular table. On the fourth point we seem to be missing the final column. When we're referring to this—and I guess this refers back to the comments of our legal staff here—just to look at a couple of examples, and the witness in question, Jean-Marc Bard, where we look at—
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
We're not going to get into that, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj. Perhaps we'll conclude it there.
I want to tell you, in regard to one inquiry you made on the question of the swearing in of witnesses, I can answer that. They were all sworn in after Mr. Ouellet, so most of them were—
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Including Ouellet and everyone after that. So I think that's the answer to your question.
Mr. Williams, you have a brief point.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Yes, I have a couple of points, Mr. Chair.
One is on your question about whether we go right to the Attorney General of Ontario. My opinion would be absolutely no. You ruled in the same way last week, on Mr. Wrzesnewskj's motion that we report to the RCMP on something. Committees of the House can only report to the House; we can't report to other jurisdictions. We can receive information, papers and so on, but I think anything we do has to go to the House. It is for the House to make that decision.
The testimony has been a comparison between the public accounts committee, which was information gathering to understand the issue, the same as Gomery, which was information gathering to find out what was going on, but the criminal proceedings were a prosecution and defence on specific charges. As you know, the investigations of the public accounts committee and at Gomery were wide ranging: what do you know about this, tell me about that, answer this question, and so on—which is quite a different process than the prosecution. I don't see any reason why these prosecutions were decided by the courts. There have been no allegations that there was perjury before the courts.
I don't think we need to do another comparison, with more testimony and so on. I think we have what we have in front us. We should limit our debate to the Gomery inquiry and the public accounts committee testimonies and decide where we're going from here.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I would agree with Mr. Williams on the last point. I still disagree, though, with the notion of the debate being in public, although I'm still listening.
This is the decision before us right now: do we go in camera to talk about what's in this report, or do we start right into it here? My concern is that inasmuch as we have an obligation to find the guilty, we have at least an equal obligation to protect the innocent. I'm not worried about the guilty being overwrought about having their name bandied about here. I am very concerned about someone who we take no action against and who therefore under the law is innocent when we've made comments about their motivation, their truthfulness, and their character. To me, we've wronged the citizen.
There is a method by which we can avoid that, and again, I'd be interested to hear a legal opinion. It seems to me that our responsibilities lie with us talking about these things in camera. Then everything we decide to act on—if anything—will be made public. It will all be there in the open. And for those who are deemed to have not violated anything—enough that we're going to take action—those discussions die inside the committee room, as they should.
4:15 p.m.
Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
I guess the legal response is to say the committee is not obliged, legally, to go the route Mr. Christopherson is describing. Morally, however, it might be the case that some weight should be given to what Mr. Christopherson is saying.
February 7th, 2007 / 4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
With respect to the offence of perjury, none of it exists under federal law, or is it in the Criminal Code?
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
I guess, then, there is no hope that it could be federally prosecuted.
The concern I have about doing nothing is that it sends the message that the truth isn't important before a committee such as this. If there is literally no response because it is too hard or it is too cumbersome and because that happened yesterday, then the forward-looking message we send to future witnesses is that the truth is optional before this and therefore other committees.
I am not sure which option is the best for us, as a committee, to pursue. Maybe having studied these matters you could share your insights as to whether you agree that a consequence-free response from this committee might signal to future witnesses that the truth is not a requisite when they're in the witness chair.
4:15 p.m.
Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Poilievre's comments are very valid and ought to cause the committee some considerable reflection. Because obviously, as I said earlier, the credibility of every committee, to some degree, in my view, depends on its ability to insist on being told the truth, particularly by local witnesses, that is, people who have seen committees and how they operate and come here with some fairly sophisticated awareness of the dynamics of committees.
You can rag the puck for the five or six minutes you need, and then the questions start all over again with the next line of questions. Witnesses can leave and the committee has gained nothing from the time they've spent. People should not think that they can do that as a sport, as it were, and that committees can't do anything about it. However, it is the case that it is not easy to do something about it in any effective legal sense. I do believe, however, that this committee could have some impact on some of the individuals here.
I've been through this report. There are some times when I, as a lawyer, am looking at two statements and I'm saying, hey, at the very least this begs an explanation. Whether the explanation will be sufficient to explain the discrepancy and the matter goes away, or whether the explanation doesn't do that and the person is in deeper doo-doo, I don't know. But there are times, with some witnesses, when the discrepancy begs explanation. To some extent, this committee owes it to itself, arguably, to seek that explanation and for others to see that they can be called back to explain why it is they told the committee this one day and told somebody else, under oath, something else. Why couldn't they have told the committee the full story when they were first here? That alone, I would suggest, would be a sobering experience, not just for the witnesses in question but for those others who might one day foresee themselves being witnesses. They can see that you are prepared, as it were, to flex your muscles.
No, you don't have prosecutorial powers. You don't have jailing powers, as such, or other penal powers, but you do have the moral authority of a body that represents your constituents, your public, and you expect to be told the truth. And when you don't get the truth, you're going to ask for some explanation. You're going to ask for some accounting.
That's accountability, arguably, of a kind this committee can effect.