Public Accounts Committee on June 11th, 2007

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

But you knew him well enough that he highly recommended you for the position.

[Supt Pierre Lavoie]

I would say yes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

On March 21, you wrote this memo to Mr. Gauvin, basically asking for his opinion or input or whatever you were asking, knowing that he would be fairly negatively impacted by the release of this information. Do you feel that you might have been in a conflict of interest at all?

[Supt Pierre Lavoie]

No.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

You said it was unusual to do this.

[Supt Pierre Lavoie]

It was unusual. We didn't have members at that level being mentioned in reports every day. But there was nothing in that report that Mr. Gauvin couldn't have seen on what had occurred. There would have to have been some special circumstances for us to withhold that report from him. I wasn't made aware of any problem with respect to Mr. Gauvin having seen the report.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Picard, in your internal investigation, you recommended sanctions against senior members. Can you tell me specifically what sanctions you recommended for Mr. Gauvin?

[Supt Christian Picard]

Mr. Gauvin got it wrong. My job, my responsibility at the time, was to investigate and report the facts. I had nothing to do with the sanctions. Deputy Commissioner Charbonneau was the appropriate officer at the time, and he's the one who decided on the sanctions for the members and public servants.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

What were the sanctions?

[Supt Christian Picard]

Some members received.... I can't recall. I know that some members were sanctioned with ethics courses, and I know that some members retired before being sanctioned or before facing the disciplinary process. I'm not sure about the rest.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Can you describe what happened to your career after you made the recommendation? You touched on it a little bit as sort of what happened in the timeline. But is there a direct negative relationship between the investigation and what happened to you afterwards? We've heard that this doesn't exist in the RCMP.

[Supt Christian Picard]

There's no hard evidence on that. I guess it would be difficult for me to comment, but obviously I didn't go anywhere.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Right.

Mr. Gauvin, you were the CFO of the organization, and if I heard you correctly, your quote directly was that “we did not know what was going on in regards to what was happening with Mr. Crupi”. And you were the CFO. How can you explain, as the CFO, that you wouldn't know what was going on? You're supposed to be tracking the money being spent in the organization. This man had $5,000 spending authority and spent $6 million. How could you possibly not know?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I don't personally track every transaction. Second, this was a project being done under HR. There were many other projects being done. We had the big CPIC project under CIO, as an example. I don't track every one of those.

On this one, as it turned out, there was collusion with Public Works, and this is what happened.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

But you were so busy going on that you kind of missed $6 million?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I was pretty busy, but I would still track money. We did ask a lot of questions, and we watched the other plans, and the other plans were going up because we were doing this cleanup.

Also, all of this was approved by the Treasury Board Secretariat pension sector. They knew a lot about pensions. They knew about Bill C-78, and they knew about the work that had to be done. I can tell you that in the RCMP, there was a lot of work that had to be done, because under program review those areas were decimated. Their records were bad. The people were not trained to do what they should be doing. It wasn't a pretty picture.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Is it fair to say, in retrospect, that you dropped the ball?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I wouldn't say that I dropped the ball, no.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

It was just a $6 million mistake.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Well, just a minute. The project was completed. There was a program evaluation on that project. It was quite positive; it was very positive.

The members are very happy with the outsourcing. About 95% are saying that the service is great. Public Works is now starting to do its own modernization, and they're talking about a $200 million bill. So I'd say, within all of that, it was reasonable.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Going back to Mr. Alberti, I think it was, who, in response to David Sweet's question on whether there is a maximum amount of time for ATIP requests, said no. I'm curious to hear someone else's feedback. I'm not an ATIP expert.

Mr. Estabrooks, what is the maximum amount of time under the legislation?

[Keith Estabrooks]

Do you mean for access to information?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Yes, for an access to information request.

[Keith Estabrooks]

I don't think there is a maximum, as long as you—There is in that you have to notify. You have 30 days, and you can extend it to 60. On an access to information request, you can extend it to 120 days, 300 days, or whatever, as long as you notify the individual. That's under the Access to Information Act. That has nothing to do with legal, though. That has absolutely nothing to do with—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Thank you, Mr. Estabrooks.

Mr. Roy.