Public Accounts Committee on April 25th, 2007

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

Yes, you can investigate that too, because these are the allegations that need to be clarified. There's no end to this rope. These are a couple of allegations that I've had given to me. Unfortunately, I don't have anything with which I could substantiate it. I don't have any documentation, but I've been informed that this is the case.

[Commr Beverley Busson]

Could I ask you to repeat the second rumour or allegation that you've put?

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

The allegation I had was that when Great-West Life were asked if they would run the administration of the insurance program, they said, well, we have to consider this; we have to investigate it and see what it's going to cost and analyze it, and so on. When it all wrapped up, they were paid the better part of a quarter of a million dollars for their investigation as to whether or not they would actually do this administration of the plan, in addition to being the underwriter.

[Commr Beverley Busson]

I will investigate that, and if it would be helpful to the committee, I will also signify whether or not those two allegations were the subject of any of the other inquiries--the Auditor General's inquiry or any of the other inquiries that have looked at this.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Thank you, Commissioner Busson.

Just before we move to Mr. Christopherson, I will point out to Mr. Williams and the commissioner that this issue may be covered in paragraph 9.34 of the original Auditor General's report. And perhaps I'll just take a minute and read it:

The Director of the National Compensation Policy Centre (NCPC) instructed the insurance carrier, Great-West Life, to begin preparing for outsourcing the administration of the RCMP employee insurance plans. This preparatory work was performed by Great-West Life without a contract—contrary to contracting regulations. After working on the project for several months, the RCMP requirements changed and Great-West Life determined that it could not provide all the required services within the specified delivery date. It was persuaded to act as a go-between for payments to another firm, Morneau Sobeco, which took on the job of administering the insurance plans for the RCMP. The RCMP then paid Morneau Sobeco for the firm's own requirements definition phase of the contract, indicating that the contractor started again from the very beginning.

So in other words, they paid for it twice. That may be covered.

Anyway, we're going to move to Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

And thank you all for your comments and for being here today.

Commissioner, I have a hypothetical question, but I'm not going to pretend it's not about the David Brown investigation. It is, but I want to put it in a hypothetical sense, and maybe you'll see why in a moment.

One of the difficulties this committee has--certainly the majority have--with the investigator process rather than a public inquiry is that there is no ability to subpoena anyone, there is no ability to put people under oath, there is no ability to subpoena documents, notwithstanding the fact that it's all being done in the backroom--reports to the minister, not Parliament.

But I wanted to ask you this, purely from an investigative point of view--and there is more investigative talent in this room right now probably than anywhere else in the nation. So my question would be this. If you're doing a simple investigation, usually you need to find out what the two sides have to say and then you sort out, finding out if they disagree, where and why and is somebody lying to you. If only one person volunteers to come in to meet with an investigator of any sort and you ask the other party to come in and give their side of it, and they won't do it, and they won't give you any documents pertaining to the information you want, how does an investigator then give a fulsome report at the end of that process, if they haven't been able to meet with both sides of whatever issue they're investigating? How do you do that, and can you?

[Commr Beverley Busson]

I think your hypothetical describes a situation where it would be difficult to assure yourself you had the whole case, if people didn't cooperate.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Right. Thank you.

That, I think, points out the problem we have with that. And I say that to you, Chair. It just reinforces that you cannot get to the truth if you cannot get to the facts. And without the legal ability to call in those facts, people can just say they don't want to meet with the investigator.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way. I want to move on.

I appreciate that you're working with the investigator, as you should. It would be improper for you to do anything else. It's just a shame that you're spending all that time and effort on a hamster wheel in a cage, because that's not going to get us to the end of this.

Changes, shift of gears: is it your understanding that Staff Sergeant Frizzell was removed?

[Commr Beverley Busson]

My understanding, from what I know so far, is that Staff Sergeant Frizzell was removed.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay.

I'll ask you, then, what you would say to Mr. Roy, who was the head of the investigation, who does not agree that there was a removal. In fact, he says he wouldn't use the word “removal”.

Now, your deputy gave testimony--and I'm reading a direct quote--this is your deputy: “I'm being careful with regard to the privacy concerns here, but I understood it was for health reasons” that Sergeant Frizzell left.

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

Have we got that deputy as Deputy George? There are many deputies.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, good point, thank you. Deputy George had said that because of health reasons....

And I'll tell you, after that we had Staff Sergeant Frizzell come up, and he said yes, he was off, but it was after all this happened. That wasn't why he left the site.

Mr. Roy has said that as far as he was concerned, the investigation was completed. The quotes are here. The investigation was completed, and the reason Staff Sergeant Frizzell was no longer doing that work was that the work was finished.

So I have some concerns. Who would brief you, Commissioner, and give you that version?

[Commr Beverley Busson]

As we moved through this, I stated that for a lot of these circumstances I'm looking forward to our own code of conduct investigation to get to the bottom of it, but if you would allow me to speculate from what I know now, I attached a copy of an order from Mr. Gork that I think.... The language I would use in relation to that order from Mr. Gork is that he was removed.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Is that the one that's right here, from Superintendent Doug Lang? It's the one that has the order. He was acting on behalf of....

[Commr Beverley Busson]

It says “written order” and is dated June 20, 2005?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, and it says right here, in written order number 3, “that you report for duty in person by 15h00”. It doesn't say anything about health. It wouldn't say removed, but it doesn't indicate anything at all about there being health concerns, and yet Deputy Commissioner George twice gave evidence that it was for health reasons.

Then just to complicate things further, Commissioner, we had the accusation against Staff Sergeant Frizzell that it was because of his interrogation techniques, that he had witnesses fleeing out of a room crying and screaming, and that this was part of the reason—which Inspector Roy then included in his final answer. But the first time he was asked, it was just very straight up: he stopped working there because the investigation was completed. And yet, Commissioner, you're using the word “removed”.

With the greatest respect, ma'am—and I mean this sincerely, with the greatest respect—I appreciate that you have some investigation going on to get to the bottom of this, but the reason we're in this public domain, ma'am, is that the internal processes within the RCMP failed Canadians, and so that's not going to be sufficient. I'm sure it will be helpful, and I'm sure you have the finest officers on it; I have no doubt. Nonetheless, it's a question of some of these internal things. You used the word “conclusively”, I believe. With the greatest respect, Commissioner, it will not be conclusive if it's done internally.

[Commr Beverley Busson]

With all due respect, Mr. Christopherson, the past processes failed Canadians; I agree with you. I believe the process we have in place with our code of conduct, which I will be happy to bring to this committee as part of our effort to show the transparency and the energy with which we are moving forward, will assure you that there will be a conclusive answer to this file.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that, ma'am; I truly do. But I have to tell you that we're spending a lot of money and time, there's an investigator who's spending money and time, now you're spending money and time, and goodness knows who else or what other arms of government are spending money and time.

Again, Chair, it would make so much sense for all involved if the minister would step up and announce a public inquiry and stop all these other expenditures and get us on one course that Canadians can have faith in, that they trust, and that they know will give us back the RCMP we love.

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No, that's it.

I understand Mr. Loeppky has a comment. I'll allow him to make a comment, and then we'll move on to Ms. Sgro.

[Garry Loeppky]

Yes, I may be able to provide a bit of clarification. I cannot with respect to the removal order. That took place after I left.

But I can tell you this. Approximately on May 23 I received a call from Assistant Commissioner Dave Gork in Lyons, who asked if I would meet with Mike Frizzell. His words were that he was creating problems for Paul Roy and he had lost focus in the investigation.

As a result of that, on May 27 at 1 o'clock, I met with Paul Roy in my office to get a briefing on what the issue was before I met with Mr. Frizzell. He started the meeting with a high-level overview of where they were at with the investigation. He said that the Ottawa Police Service was dealing directly with the Crown, and that Chief Bevan would be presenting the results of the investigation to the senior management within the next month. I asked again about the reporting relationship with Dave. He felt that was excellent, that there had been no interference.

I asked him what the specific issue was with Staff Sergeant Frizzell, and he indicated that Staff Sergeant Frizzell was concerned that the RCMP wouldn't deal with the situation, and that in his view there were leads that could still be pursued. Inspector Roy told me that it had started out as a three-month investigation but it had taken over a year, that in his view Staff Sergeant Frizzell was inflexible, and that the Crown had reviewed the material and a forensic audit had been done. Inspector Roy was of the view that it was time to conclude the file and move forward, and that the internal matters were outside of his mandate. And he felt that they had gone as far as possible on the investigation.

One hour later, I met with Staff Sergeant Frizzell, and he told me he was concerned about the scope of the investigation and that more needed to be done. I advised him that decisions needed to be taken by the investigative team and by the lead investigator as to when a file is concluded. That is why we brought in an outside police force with an inspector in charge. I also indicated that Chief Bevan would review the report and would report back to the RCMP, likely the commissioner.

Mr. Frizzell had some concerns about the competency of Mr. Roy. We didn't get into the specifics of that. I simply responded that the OPS was asked to lead the file, and I trusted Chief Bevan's judgment to appoint somebody who could do that investigation. I said, “If there is something major that you uncover, then I have every confidence that it'll be addressed, either through Chief Bevan or through the Crown or whatever.” And I encouraged him to stay focused and continue on with his career.

I think, before this committee, Staff Sergeant Frizzell himself said that there are times when investigators lose focus in a complex investigation, and there was obviously a disagreement between the two with respect to that issue. But I was not involved in any discussions with either of them together in a room.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Could I ask the indulgence of the committee for 30 seconds, just to read three sentences, to keep it joined to this, rather than disjointed in Hansard?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Go ahead, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

This is from April 18. It's Mr. Roy. The sentence is this: “There were some conflicts during the course of the investigation that Staff Sergeant Frizzell was involved with. However, they were manageable, from my perspective, and it was reported to me that we could go along right to the end.”

In the next sentence, the question was from you, Chair: “The suggestion that Staff Sergeant Frizzell was removed from this investigation based on your instructions is not a correct suggestion?” This was to Inspector Roy.

The Inspector responded, “I don't agree with the term 'removed'. He was not removed. He was returned to his own unit once the criminal investigation was over.”

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mrs. Sgro, seven minutes.