Public Accounts Committee on March 28th, 2007

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

Okay, just the past couple of weeks.

Anybody else important at the top who steered you away or said go for it?

[S/Sgt Mike Frizzell]

No. I mean, the nature of investigation is you don't go blabbing around. That's why the idea of gag orders was ludicrous.

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

Let me ask you this question. Again, I'll just go quickly down the line.

You have an ethics commissioner within the RCMP and you're all talking about a serious breach of ethics and all kinds of things. Who went to the ethics commissioner here? Mr. Lewis, Mr. Macaulay, and Ms. Revine have gone.

What kind of a response did you get from the ethics commissioner within the RCMP, Mr. Lewis?

[Ron Lewis]

He was excellent. He was a very good supporter—

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

Okay, well, then—

[Ron Lewis]

—however, he told me “go outside the RCMP, I can't do it either”. Then he resigned shortly afterwards.

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

Mr. Macaulay.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

I originally went to Mr. Spice and advised him of the findings that Ms. Revine was starting to uncover. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, he was the individual who released that information that I gave him to Barb George and to Assistant Commissioner Vern White at that time. The next thing I knew I was in the commissioner's office. That led up to the June 17 meeting.

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

That was Commissioner Zaccardelli.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

Yes. But John Spice...when we met on September 23 with our internal auditors, he was struggling, and he kept telling us...not what he was telling wrong, but that this was going nowhere; he wasn't getting anywhere with the commissioner.

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

Ms. Revine.

[Denise Revine]

I also met with the auditors on the same day. I think it was on September 25. What prompted the meeting was an e-mail I wrote to Chief Superintendent Macaulay. It was a lengthy, seven-page e-mail outlining all the issues and trying to appeal to the organization's moral conscience, basically, that something had to be done. It was dysfunctional, and people were receiving threats, and we had to bring this to a criminal investigation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I understand, Mr. Gork, you have a comment--I'm sorry, Assistant Commissioner Gork.

[A/Commr David Gork]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have copies of the briefing note that Mr. Frizzell wrote and the response from the Ottawa Police Service.

I think what has to be understood here is that an offer was made because Mr. Frizzell was not satisfied with the response he got either from Inspector Paul Roy nor from myself: did he wish to meet with Deputy Commissioner Gary Loeppky, who was an extremely respected senior officer of this organization. If you have any questions about it, I'm sure if you ask anybody who is sitting on this board here, he has the utmost respect of anybody in our organization. The arrangement was set up if he in fact wanted to go and meet with Deputy Commissioner Loeppky to identify any issues he had.

If the board wishes, I am quite prepared to provide the briefing note from Mr. Frizzell and the response from the city police.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Yes, if you'd table them with the clerk, we'll get them translated and will circulate them.

Thank you very much, Mr. Williams.

We're going to move on to Mr. Christopherson for seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for your presentations today. I'm sure the government members are glad the opposition overrode their thinking at the last meeting and that we have had this meeting, because this is not the end of this.

I don't want to be flippant about it, but I have to tell you, you hear enough of this, and the first thing you think of is, “Somebody call the police.” Then you realize the seriousness, the absurdity of it, that you have nowhere else to go but to come here. If anything, it underscores the absolute need both for the RCMP and, as a former Ontario Solicitor General I would also say, the OPP to have a public service board that oversees. Leaving it with just the minister is not enough. It's not enough distance, because that would be the next place you'd go after the commissioner. The only place higher in the whole organization is the minister, but you're still into the political realm.

Hopefully certain folks will take a cue from this and look at it. Also, unionizing the RCMP would go a long way, because it would give them a lot of the heft they need.

I want to come back to Chief Superintendent Macaulay. Just for the edification of everybody here, Chief Superintendent, would you please outline where you fit in, starting with the commissioner and going through the ranks?

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

Do you mean where I fit in the organization?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

There is the commissioner, and then my boss is the deputy commissioner of operations and integration. Then I have a boss, an assistant commissioner, who's the director of community contract and aboriginal policing services, and I report to him.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So you're fourth from the top.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

That's correct.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I wanted that out there for the simple reason...what you said earlier, the quote you gave—I'm going to ask you to mention it again—in which Deputy Commissioner George said to you, “You're an island.”

I want to get this correct. Are you alleging she said, “You will not get the truth”—something like that? That's the phrase I'm interested in, sir.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

The exact quote is she advised that I was on an island by myself and that no one was going to tell the truth. We had a lengthy conversation on the issues and again ended up around the facts concerning my removal.

Then she went on to explain to me how naive I had been to think that anyone was going to stand beside me in this type of situation and tell the truth.

These are notes I took at the time—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That was going to be my next question. I was going to ask you when you—

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

It was in 2004.