First off, as to Ms. Burton's testimony, I believe she said “I don't know who did the interviewing.” Is that true? Did everybody else hear that? I've been labelled with making people cry, and she didn't even know who was doing the interviewing? I did not interview Liette Bellemare, and Jeff Hutchefon and I have regular conversations. He most certainly never cried or ran from a room.
That's what I heard. Did anybody hear differently?
Secondly, I did have a number of issues with Mr. Roy, and let me give you an illustration of why.
We've heard here at different times that Mr. Roy had no idea what I was doing at the end of the investigation. Let me read you an e-mail. I'm sorry I didn't get it in ahead of time. I didn't know I would have to read it, but this is from Mr. Roy to Ms. George--Barb. This is from May 31, just a couple of weeks before the order. He talks about wanting to know how much money has been paid back to the pension fund. Then he states:
The other issue surrounds the outsourcing of the administration of the RCMP insurance plans. This issue was identified by the investigation. I know that an audit recently took place and I'm wondering if any action or repayment of funds to correct the problem has taken place.
He's referring to the finding of the audit that says “Expenses charged to the RCMP group and life disability plans along with their funding were found to be inappropriate.”
Mr. Roy then goes on to say to Ms. George, “Media lines dealing with these issues need to be prepared in anticipation of inquiries and in answer to the original media stories that surfaced a year ago.” There's a bit of coaching there for Ms. George when the poop hits the fan.
This was sent to me by Mr. Roy. This is what I was acting upon. What I found was, as Ms. George referenced in her letter, they asked for $540,000 to be paid back, plus interest, and $542,000 was paid back, even though Great-West Life sent a cheque for $578,000. So there's a little thing of a missing $36,000 as well.
Anyway, my point is that it was Mr. Roy who brought all this to my attention at the end of the investigation. I'm not sure why he would have done that--knowing that I had quite an issue with this--if he didn't want me to follow up on it. When I did follow up on it--and you've all heard the phone conversation, how harassing it was--the person who I was trying to follow up on it with made a phone call to Inspector Roy. Well, we all know the rest.
I just want to set the record straight there.