I'm the complainant in that investigation as well. It seems that a lot of my duties were labour relations. It seemed that a lot of my duties became investigation.
What happened was that in 2001 an assistant commissioner in the RCMP complained openly in an e-mail to all his employees that they were accepting privileges from contractors, which is not only a Criminal Code offence under section 121 but a violation of government conflict regulations, the code of conduct—the whole thing.
Mr. Gauvin, who was the comptroller or chief financial officer of the RCMP at that time chastised him openly for raising the issue.
Then I was asked to come in when, after he left the unit, four sergeants were asked to dig into it, and on a Monday morning they were brought in and told, “Your unit's being disbanded.” They asked when. It usually takes a month or two to clear up. He said, “No, today, right now. It's over.”
They came to me, and I went to the commissioner, through our national executive, and passed on the information to the commissioner that the deputy commissioner had failed under Regulation 46 to cause an investigation when reported, and nothing was done.
So I wrote a formal, written complaint, because I had dealt with the commissioner before, and when I do things verbally he doesn't seem to remember. So I brought the complaint to the assistant commissioner in A Division, and as he read it, he looked at me and said, “Gee, I'm involved too.” He eventually resigned. I get back to the old story: this is not the RCMP I joined; it changed five years ago.
As a result, I forced the investigation to go beyond this member, because he couldn't deal with it then, and he was the only person in the RCMP who had authority to deal with it.
It was turned over to the OPP. They came in and investigated. Nineteen people were either charged criminally or internally; some resigned before they were charged. Included were our chief financial officer, Mr. Gauvin, and our chief human resource officer, Mr. Ewanovich. Mr. Ewanovich at that time was a TCE, what we call a temporary civilian employee on contract. He could have been let go without cause, and we had cause. In fact, when he was hired the year before, while he was being interviewed for a suitability security clearance, he caused an investigation to be conducted against him for harassment. It was founded. An assistant commissioner and a staff sergeant conducted it. Staffing said don't hire him. The commissioner hired him anyway. That's when our problems began. He came in under.... He's the guy in charge of the RCMP policy for harassment, and he was a harasser, a founded harasser. It's incredible that these things were allowed to happen.
There's a similar.... The same people involved in this pension insurance, the same.... And some of them are still here today. Some of the people who were under investigation were removed from their positions because they couldn't be allowed to stay in there. Once the limitation of action expired, they were back on the job. They're out there right now commanding divisions.
That's why we're here today. We need some action there.