Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to be once again before the public accounts committee. It has been a while, in my case, as law clerk and parliamentary counsel.
I have with me the senior parliamentary counsel, legal services, Greg Tardi, who has been working with Brian O'Neal of the Library of Parliament research branch, who is here today, of course, on the staff of the committee in reviewing the testimony given to the committee in the 37th Parliament.
I believe their report is what Mr. Williams was referring to a moment ago, where there is a chart setting out what are identified as possible discrepancies between what was said to this committee and what was later said to the sponsorship inquiry of Mr. Justice Gomery.
Let me first say, and I feel I want very much to say that at a certain personal level, given my experience not only with this committee in the sponsorship inquiry but also the government operations committee in the matter pertaining to the privacy commissioner and on other occasions as well, I think it is very important that committees take their role seriously and expect of witnesses that they testify fully as to the facts within their knowledge and be truthful, and it is regrettable, in my judgment, that it is too often the case that something less than that is offered by witnesses, particularly those who are knowledgeable about committees and the dynamics of committees. They in many cases understand how to appear before committees and perhaps to minimize their disclosures to the committee because of that very dynamic, which they are knowledgeable about.
I have explained to members of committees and chairs from time to time that witnesses are obliged to not simply speak truthfully but to give the whole truth and everything within their knowledge, and also not to wait for the right question but to actually give the information they know is relevant to the matter before the committee, without waiting for the right question or looking for opportunities to avoid giving full answers to the committee.
Regrettably, in the sponsorship inquiry, as in other cases as well, there were times when there were witnesses who didn't seem able to recall fully the matters that you would expect to have been within their direct knowledge, and yet later, in front of the commission of inquiry, their recollections seemed in some respects to be more complete and more attentive to detail.
First, I want to commend the committee for taking this up, because I think it's an important issue if committees are to sustain their credibility vis-à-vis the public generally and vis-à-vis their witnesses. They ought to take seriously their obligation of members to speak truthfully and to take seriously any appearance of that not happening.
However, what we're talking about here is perjury. Perjury is a tricky business. First of all, you need to know where the truth lies before you can identify that there has been any perjury. Then you need to show that the person you think has been perjurious knows what the truth is or knew what the truth was and chose to say something else, or chose to give only part of the truth and knowingly held back part of the truth, and knew or ought to have known that the committee would be misled by not having the full truth.
This, as legal charges go, so to speak, is one of the more difficult ones, because it's all in the mind of the accused as to what he did or did not know and what he did or did not intend by his answer. In many other criminal offences, there is the actual deed that is the criminal offence, and then there is the question of whether the person intended to do what quite evidently he did do. To some extent it is quite evident, in most cases, that obviously the person intended to do what they did, but in perjury, it is very subjective and it is very hard to prove it. I warn you that while I commend you for pursuing this question, it nonetheless, legally speaking, is a very difficult matter to establish.
There are basically two routes available, the legal charge of perjury versus a report to the House with a recommendation of a citation for contempt for misleading the committee. They're quite different.
As I said, Mr. Tardi has worked on this with Mr. O'Neal. I would ask Mr. Tardi, if you would permit, Mr. Chair, to summarize in greater detail the legal requirements on perjury and what we find in the testimony.
Just before he begins, let me assure you that in my own review of the material as we have it from the Library of Parliament, there are discrepancies. There's no question, there are discrepancies, and with regard to some witnesses, the discrepancies beg for an explanation, but is it perjury? Is it, in the first instance, a false answer knowingly given as a false answer by the witness? Is the discrepancy explained at a later date by a memory improvement in a bona fide fashion and a more extensive answer is provided? These things can happen. You know, Mr. Chairman, as a lawyer yourself, that people's memories can improve over time once they are implicated in the whole matter and brought to refreshing their memory. More information comes back to them. Details can return.
When they were before this committee at the earlier part of the process, at that point some of those details may not have come to them. That's a forgiving view on these discrepancies. You can be more cynical and say “I don't buy it. They knew what they were saying in the first instance and they knew what they were saying in the second instance, and they ought to be held accountable.” That's a decision for the committee.
I would only suggest, before Mr. Tardi starts, that if you get down to looking at the particulars of who said what and when and where, and who ought to have said more and who ought to have said something differently, you're getting into some very sensitive issues relative to the particular individuals, and you might find it's something you'd discuss more effectively in an in camera meeting. Not only would you have a better discussion among yourselves as to who you think was deceiving the committee, but you also would be avoiding a disagreeable situation: if that discussion were held in public and you had the intention of calling some of these witnesses before the committee to explain themselves, you would have signalled your concerns in full detail to those witnesses, and they could, of course, if they are deceiving persons, prepare themselves to deceive the committee once again. You don't want to sit around and talk in public about how you found some witnesses to be deceiving you. I think you'd want to address that in your own minds in private, with specific reference to specific witnesses. Short of that, there might be a helpful discussion we can offer you today relative to the legal requirements as they relate to perjury or contempt.
Mr. Chairman, if there's no objection on your part, I would ask Mr. Tardi if he wants to brief the committee.