Public Accounts Committee on May 29th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'd like to call the meeting to order.

I invite the cameras to leave the room, please.

I want to welcome everyone here. This, members and visitors, is a continuation of the committee's hearings into chapter 9, “Pension and Insurance Administration, Royal Canadian Mounted Police”, of the November 2006 report of the Auditor General of Canada.

We're very pleased to have with us today Staff Sergeant Mike Frizzell, who has been here before, of course. We have Chief Superintendent Fraser Macaulay, who has been before the committee on this particular investigation on several occasions. We have Acting Deputy Commissioner Kevin Mole, human resources, and also Tony Pickett, officer in charge of insurance renewal and modernization project. I want to extend, on behalf of the committee, a very warm welcome to each and every one of you.

Before we swear the witnesses in to proceed, I want to deal, colleagues, with the minutes of the steering committee, which was held earlier today. Those minutes have been circulated. I would invite a motion to have them approved and then we can open it for discussion. Is somebody prepared to move that?

Mr. Christopherson moves their adoption.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I am now going to go back to the formal part of the meeting. I understand we have a presentation.

First of all, I will swear the witnesses in, and then we have a presentation from Chief Superintendent Macaulay and Staff Sergeant Frizzell. I'll turn the meeting over to you people to give the presentation.

[Staff Sergeant Mike Frizzell, Staff Sergeant, Strategic and Operational Support, National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I, Mike Frizzell, do swear that the evidence I'm about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[Chief Superintendent Fraser Macaulay, Chief Superintendent, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I, Fraser Macaulay, do swear that the evidence I shall give on this examination shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[Deputy Commissioner Kevin Mole, Acting Deputy Commissioner, Human Resources, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I, Kevin Michael Mole, do swear that the evidence I give on this examination shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[Inspector Tony Pickett, Officer in charge, Insurance Renewal and Modernization Project, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I, Tony Pickett, also known as Anthony Pickett, do swear that the evidence that I shall give on this examination shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Chief Superintendent Macaulay, the floor is yours.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

Thank you, Chair.

We have brought with us today 15 binders with appendices. Unfortunately, they are only in one official language because they are appendices at this point in time. The presentation has been done up in both official languages. We have left them with the clerk and we were awaiting the indulgence of the chair to determine whether or not we could make reference to them here today. We have 15 copies, 15 binders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Chief Superintendent, the only way that can happen is if we have the unanimous consent of all committee members.

Just to put on the record exactly what you want to do, where are these? I don't see them.

So this is the binder. There is one binder for each member.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

And these contain what?

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

These are appendices and give evidence around the slides that are being spoken to. There are copies of letters. There are copies of e-mail transactions. They are issues that support the issues we are going to talk about here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Of course your presentation is in both official languages.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

Correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

As everyone knows, the only way this is going to happen, as it is certainly against the policy of this and every House committee, is with unanimous consent. Then we'll receive them.

Mr. Williams, do you want to speak to that?

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

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Not only are we veering off into some unchartered waters, as this particular investigation has been doing in the last number of weeks, but we also have a constitutional requirement to operate in both official languages, and as a national force, the RCMP operates in both official languages.

When I was in your position for a number of years, Mr. Chair, I was adamant about upholding that rule. It was not a matter of convenience for the majority who may speak one particular language or the other. We are an institution of official languages at all times.

We are a public body, Mr. Chairman. We are also televised, and we deal largely with verbal presentations. They may sometimes refer to documentation elsewhere, but the bulk of the material that we receive is oral.

Therefore, when I moved that these gentlemen come forward and make their presentation, I was hoping that they would make an oral presentation to us with some slides, and so on. Then we and Canadians could walk away from here saying we understood what this was all about.

If you're going to refer to 15 binders, and I hope that what Mr. Lake has isn't one of them—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

—we will never ever be able to explain to Canadians what this was all about.

Therefore, I think that we should ask these gentlemen to make their presentation. We abide by the rules of this House regarding two official languages, and we can read these binders over the summer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I take it, Mr. Williams—and I agree with you, by the way—that you're not consenting to the binder.

Again, I know that sometimes we do it with witnesses who don't have the resources, the capacity, or the wherewithal to translate large volumes of documents. We make the House services available to them. Sometimes we don't get them, but normally we expect to have things before the meeting in both official languages, so that people here have the choice of which language they want to use.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate what Mr. Williams is saying. I'd be interested to hear what other members might have to say, as to whether or not an exception is warranted at this time.

I agreed at the get-go that all of this should have been in both languages. It should have been run through the committee leadership well ahead of time, but that didn't happen.

I want to put on the record, in fairness to the RCMP officers who are presenting, that I can recall one or maybe two occasions when we gave that exception because there was so much, because there were e-mails, and all members of the committee were in support of it. It's not totally unusual that the RCMP might have expected that background reference attachment material would be allowed.

I want to put that on the record to be fair. We have gone this route with RCMP background material before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Monsieur Laforest.

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

Mr. Chairman, I fully agree with Mr. Williams. There is no doubt that all documents have to be drafted in both languages. I would also just say that I think it's a shame these documents were unable to be translated.

The most important thing — and this has been our view in terms of the continuity of the work of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts — is for the Committee to be able to do its work, hear witnesses in public and give the public an opportunity to be informed of the testimony that has been given as well as the identity of the participants.

However, if it turns out that documents cannot be translated before being tabled, would it not be appropriate for part of the documents to be translated as soon as possible, so that they can possibly be used as evidence, even if that means tabling them a little later? Would it not be appropriate for the people tabling these documents to select those that are most relevant, so that either they or the Committee could then have them translated?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Monsieur Laforest, the policy of the committee is that documents are not tabled until they've been translated into both official languages.

We did make an exception earlier in this particular investigation. It was for a very large document—and I forget which one it was right now—that from our information would have taken months to get translated. There was consent given to table it, with the understanding that certain designated segments would be translated. That was the KPMG report, and I believe that has been done.

So I take it that unanimous consent is not forthcoming.

Back to you, Chief Superintendent Macaulay.

[C/Supt Fraser Macaulay]

Thank you, sir.

At this point, I'll turn it over to Mike Frizzell. He will walk you through the slides, which I believe you have in both official languages.

[S/Sgt Mike Frizzell]

Just for the record, most of what's in the binder are excerpts from criminal investigation. We received permission only yesterday to make copies for you, so translation was an impossibility. It certainly wasn't because we wanted to show disrespect—