Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 26th, 2007

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Anyway, Mr. Wouters, if this type of situation arose under your leadership, where it was obvious that the estimates had been exceeded and a simple legal opinion said that, would you go and find yourself another legal opinion to substantiate your position, or would you bring it to Parliament's attention and say you needed more money because the money had been spent? Unlike what Mr. Moloney was saying, that most departments don't spend until it's approved, in this case it had been spent without approval. What would you do in this situation?

[Wayne Wouters]

Normally when these issues arise vis-à-vis appropriation versus appropriated accounting treatment, first and foremost I seek the advice of the Comptroller General, who often will have a discussion with the Auditor General in terms of overall accounting treatment. I'm not going to comment on that case that's going forward, but I think it's absolutely critical that when these issues arise, the Comptroller General needs to apprise the Auditor General to ensure that there is—

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I don't want to revisit that old situation. I laid that out as groundwork for asking what your position would be if this type of scenario presented itself to you. Would you take the high route and say it should be done right, or would you try to find some way to weasel out of it?

[Wayne Wouters]

I'm not sure what doing it right means. Often accounting treatment and legal obligations through appropriations can result in a conflict, so in my view there's no simple answer to this. I know people are perhaps looking for one, but there's not.

I think every case has to be looked at on its own merits, and we have to determine what the overall advice is. The best way to deal with this on a go-forward basis is to ensure that there is ample opportunity for the Comptroller General to have discussions with the AG, so that we can basically make a determination on what the accounting treatment is well in advance of these.

So I cannot make a point that there's a right or wrong answer. I think it does very much vary from case to case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Thank you, Mr. Wouters.

That, members, concludes this part of the meeting. We're going to be back on Wednesday.

Do you have anything to say to conclude today's meeting, Mrs. Fraser or Mr. Wouters?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we're back on Wednesday.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay.

I have a motion to deal with at the committee level here now, so I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Fraser, your associates from the Office of the Auditor General, and you, Mr. Wouters and Mr. Moloney. I take it we'll see you all back here on Wednesday.

Members, at this point in time we're going to deal with Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion. It has been circulated. I would think it is familiar to committee members, as we've had it before.

I'm going to allocate ten minutes to deal with the motion. I'm going to give Mr. Wrzesnewskyj two minutes to present his motion. I'll then entertain up to seven interventions of one minute each, and I'll go back to Mr. Wrzesnewskyj before we put the question.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, for up to two minutes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I don't think I'll require two minutes.

As you mentioned, I've spoken to this motion previously, and we now also have the benefit of bringing some of the RCMP officials before us. I think that reinforces the importance of having this motion pass.

Is it necessary for me to reread the motion? No? In that case, Chair, I pass it back to you. You did note that the original motion specified February 28. That might be a pretty short timeline.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Do you want to amend that to March 31 or some other date? It's not going to happen February 28.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd be amenable to that. We could change that date from February 28 to March 31, as you've suggested.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Williams.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm speaking against the motion.

We had a hearing with the Commissioner of the RCMP and the chief of police for the Ottawa Police Service. They told us that nobody had benefited from the misaccounting of the funds in the pension fund. There was no evidence that they felt they could use to go to court to obtain a prosecution. This is with about 16 people being assigned to this case over a number of months. Therefore, I don't know what we can do that they couldn't do.

As I've always said, Mr. Chairman, we are the institution that holds organizations accountable. There's no doubt that there were some lapses of authority here, where nobody was really disciplined. We agree with that, and they should have been. But the rules are the rules, and the courts have ruled that the time has expired, so nothing can be done. We had the full explanation here by the Commissioner of the RCMP that, yes, the deadline had been changed and they missed the deadline, and that's it. There wasn't sufficient evidence to support criminal charges in court. The crown prosecutor said they're not going forward with charges.

So I'm not exactly sure what we're actually going to achieve here, Mr. Chairman, because to get to the bottom of this serious issue—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Williams, I'm going to have to cut you off.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I just have one final point, Mr. Chairman, and it is that with perhaps one exception, if the letter comes back from the RCMP saying there was some serious mal-administration regarding the removal of Staff Sergeant Mike Frizzell from the case, then I'm prepared to revisit. At this point in time, though, I think we'll just have to say we're done with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Mr. Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On reading the material supplied on what these witnesses could bring to the committee, I feel that the committee hasn't yet heard all of the views on the current situation. In my opinion, it would clearly be better to adopt the resolution, so that the committee can form a much more enlightened opinion on the whole issue of pension plan management.

The Bloc Québécois intends to vote in favour of the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Laforest.

Mr. Fitzpatrick.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Williams said we're a committee of accountability. If I understand correctly, the Auditor General's review identified the issues at stake. The people who were here, along with the Auditor General, seemed to be saying the concerns are being addressed, and hopefully there will be no repeat performance of this sort of problem.

To me, that is my understanding of how this committee works. We identify problems, we look at corrections to the way things work, and so on. I think we're ill prepared as a group to become any sort of jury and trier of facts, a back-up system to the criminal justice system.

The real difficulty I have—and I do bring my legal training to bear on this matter—is that there were four audits and there were a number of investigations. They were all reviewed. The findings on these things basically came to the same conclusions. They were turned over to crown counsel, an experienced crown prosecutor for the Province of Ontario, with no axe to grind. The RCMP doesn't even do very much work in Ontario, from what I can gather.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Fitzpatrick, we're out of time.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I want to make my point, though.

Their finding was that there was not sufficient evidence to proceed with any criminal prosecution, so my concern is the purpose of this meeting. Is the purpose of the meeting for us to sit around and overrule the crown prosecutor and say they don't know their job and we know better? I think that's problematic. I'm not in a position to make that kind of judgment. He's an experienced crown counsel, and I think those are important considerations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We're going to move now to Ms. Sgro.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When I followed this issue at the beginning, I thought that would be the end of it, frankly. We heard from everybody and they looked like they had a pretty thorough investigation. What bothered me throughout it was the fact that they had Ottawa police investigating it and they had 15 RCMP officers, if I recall the number, working along with this investigation. Those things never make any sense when you have the police investigating the police.

With all due respect to everybody, I have the utmost respect for the RCMP, the Ottawa police, and everybody who works in that particular job market. What bothered me was that the individuals who were named here as participants all ended up on health leave or one thing or the other. I think we owe it to them, since we had that initial hearing, to have one more meeting with them here.

Part of our job in public accounts is not to go on witch hunts, for sure. I'm not interested in that. But we have to make sure everything went the way it was supposed to go. It just left me with the feeling from these individuals, who all ended up on sick leave—It's a gnawing, bothersome thing to me, and I think we should be taking the next step and spending one more meeting to listen to these people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. Sgro.

I'm going to give you a minute to respond to the interventions, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, if you want to take it.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In the last meeting, we had certain evidence that I had understood to have been brought forward, when in fact it had not been brought forward. The Auditor General, even in her report, wasn't aware of some of the details that were tabled during the last meeting.

As Ms. Sgro mentioned, there are some gnawing questions here. I really think we owe it to these rank-and-file officers, especially those who stepped forward. If they hadn't stepped forward, this would have been a continuing problem. These officers stepped forward and made sure people were made aware of serious issues with the pension fund and insurance funds, and they've unfortunately paid personal consequences. I believe they should have the opportunity to have their day to come before us and give us a clearer picture of what actually transpired.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

I'm going to now put the question on the motion as amended.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])