Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 6th, 2007

[Anne McLellan]

Mr. Lake, you asked, so let me finish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Just hold it for a second, Ms. McLellan.

Mr. Lake, your question lasted two minutes and twenty seconds. She's at a minute now. It may not be the answer you want--

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

She's not giving an answer; she's talking about an entirely different subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Ms. McLellan, please continue.

[Anne McLellan]

Let me conclude. I was in receipt of Mr. Lewis's concerns at approximately the end of February or the first of March. I immediately asked my then chief of staff to take this up with the commissioner and determine what additional steps, if any, were being taken in relation to what were clearly serious concerns raised by Mr. Lewis.

I was told through my chief of staff, based on her discussions with the commissioner, that a criminal investigation was going to be launched. That investigation was launched less than a week after I received the information from Mr. Lewis. That investigation took place, and it took a year. It's interesting that Mr. Brown has indicated that although the investigation wasn't independent, he felt it was done appropriately. They had generous resources and it was done in a timely fashion.

Then at the immediate end of that investigation the internal investigation began, which Mr. Brown also indicated was the only viable thing that could have been done at that point.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Ms. McLellan, we have a point of order.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Clearly Ms. McLellan has gone way off the question she was asked. The clock is running, and I'm sure she is very much aware of that. None of this is new to her.

I know that you have been very effective in days gone by in intervening to steer witnesses back on topic. For some reason you have not exercised the same effectiveness when it comes to your former caucus colleague. We ask that we have the chance to continue the questioning if the answers are not going to be forthcoming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I might have been effective at steering witnesses, but I'm not as effective at steering colleagues in their questions. The question was long and comprehensive. I'm listening very closely to the answer, and I'm asking Ms. McLellan to conclude quickly.

[Anne McLellan]

I'm trying to answer the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It may not be the answer Mr. Lake wants, but that is the answer she's giving. She was asked the question. It wasn't a simple question. Mr. Lake's question went on for two minutes and twenty seconds. He went into a whole chronology of events. She has given a response as best she can. I'm going to ask her to conclude.

[Anne McLellan]

I would simply say that I completely disagree. If Mr. Lake's assertion is that I did nothing or that my office did nothing upon receipt of Mr. Lewis's communication, that is unalterably and fundamentally a misrepresentation. My submission last time made it plain what we did. There were processes, those processes were followed, and you have to see them through. Whether people like it or not, we're not through yet.

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

That was great.

On April 2, 2004, David Anderson, one of the Conservative members, asked you questions about it. He said:

...the RCMP is being investigated over the sponsorship scandal. Now we find out that it also has an ongoing internal investigation of its own pension fund. The RCMP has the responsibility to be transparent in these investigations; however, it turns out the pension fund investigation was unknown to anyone but a few senior officers.

Why has this report been kept secret from the 20,000 members of the force...

Your answer had pretty much the same tone:

I have been assured that no funds are missing from the RCMP's pension plan. The RCMP continues to review this matter.

Mr. Anderson asked a follow-up question:

...when the RCMP was found to be involved in the Prime Minister's

--that would have been Chrétien at the time--

sponsorship mess, it called in an outside police force to investigate.

Billions of dollars are tied up in this pension fund. Most of the management of it is done from inside the RCMP. The problems related to it are internal RCMP issues. The audit is being done by RCMP officers. There is far too much room for a conflict of interest and once again Canadians deserve better.

Will the minister commit to bringing in outside investigators to get to the bottom of this matter?

Again you said:

The RCMP continues to review this matter.

So it seems that time and time again, to paraphrase, you said they'd take care of it. That was on April 2. So this was obviously a big issue.

On April 3, I note that the front page of the National Post ran a story. You're quoted as saying pretty much the same thing: they'll take care of it.

On April 20, Zaccardelli was under fire in the National Post. The first paragraph of the article said:

The Liberal government yesterday defended Giuliano Zaccardelli, the RCMP Commissioner, after an Opposition MP said the top Mountie “betrayed” his employees by failing to stop millions from being misappropriated from their pension fund.

On April 20 as well, a headline in another paper said, “Top Mountie “betrayed” force: Tory MP”.

So it seems that time and time again we were bringing this up, and time and time again you did nothing, and your answer was, oh, don't worry about it, they'll take care of it. I'm wondering who they were supposed to trust. They came to you because you were their last resort.

Ron Lewis, in his letter to you, indicated that was the case, and you did nothing. You were the minister in charge of the RCMP for a couple of more years after that and you did absolutely nothing. You hid behind the criminal investigation, but when the investigation was over you did nothing.

Why did you do nothing?

[Anne McLellan]

You don't hide behind a criminal investigation. The comment reflects a tragic lack of understanding of our criminal justice system. A minister does not interfere with a criminal investigation.

That investigation was ordered. Deputy Commissioner Loeppky made the request of the Ottawa Police Service. If some of your quotes are from April 2004, the Ottawa Police Service was already conducting a criminal investigation of the matter.

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

You did nothing when that investigation was over.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Lake, please do not interrupt the witness any further.

[Anne McLellan]

Let me take you through the process.

When the investigation was over, as Mr. Brown said, the only viable option was an internal investigation. That internal investigation took place. Unfortunately--and I agree entirely with Mr. Brown on this point--there was a lack of vigilance on the part of the force. They let the limitation period lapse. These were internal management issues. The internal investigation would have led to serious disciplinary actions being taken but for the fact that the limitation period had lapsed due to a reinterpretation of the period by the Federal Court of Canada.

So please don't suggest that things weren't being done in an appropriate way that was respectful of the rule of law and due process. In fact, all of you are still part of the process, in the sense that the internal investigation, because of the limitation period, was not what it was thought to be. On the legal advice of the Department of Justice and others, the Federal Court disagreed with that advice. Disciplinary action couldn't be proceeded with under the code of conduct. Public accounts had the Auditor General's report. You took up your work and discharged that responsibly. The Auditor General discharged her responsibility. Mr. Day, the minister, discharged his responsibility by asking Mr. Brown to do what he did. This is a process that everybody is involved in here to try to get to the bottom of what happened.

I respect Mr. Christopherson. He may believe a public inquiry is the only way to get to the bottom of this at this point, but it's all part of the process that had to be followed. Whether people like it or not, the code of conduct—and Mr. Brown makes this point over and over again—is at the heart of the disciplinary process and culture of the RCMP. I think he raises a good question: should it be in the same way for the future? My guess is that the task force led by him will offer us some advice on that. We're all moving forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. McLellan.

That, colleagues, concludes round one.

Round two, four minutes, Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming this afternoon.

I'd like to bring the tone down a bit. I would like to apologize on behalf of my colleagues who have been trying, through the front door, through the back door, through any window they can possibly enter, to cast aspersions on you, Ms. McLellan. I think that's unfortunate.

I do, however, want to come to the comments made by Mr. Brown in his report, comments that I raised this morning with other witnesses. They have to do with what I think is the penultimate serious question, the elephant in the room in this report, which is whether or not there is going to be or whether there is an ongoing OPP investigation.

Mr. Brown seems to suggest that there is no room or no need for an independent commission of inquiry, a public inquiry. That's the government's official position, but he leaves the reader of this report, A Matter of Trust, with all kinds of outstanding questions. Some of those questions will be worked out internally. Some of them will be worked out, I assume, through his task force. But for me and my constituents, I think the most important question is what happened with the Ottawa Police Service investigation. How is it possible that the Ottawa Police Service investigation was staffed almost entirely by members of the RCMP? How is it possible that the RCMP then provided the office space to the Ottawa Police Service to conduct the investigation? If I took that and put it to any one of my four children, they would probably say there's something inherently wrong with this, or at least the appearance of something wrong with it.

I have to take at face value the conclusion of Mr. Brown, who is after all a QC, who did a reasonable job in two months. I can't say I'm going to take this report as gospel. I just won't. I think there are many outstanding questions. But he does conclude that the OPP ought to review the Ottawa Police Service file.

I need your help to understand. Why would Mr. Brown arrive at a conclusion that the OPP ought to be called in to review the evidence after a crown attorney had decided there was not sufficient evidence to warrant criminal prosecution? Can you help me understand why he would make such a recommendation?

[Anne McLellan]

Mr. Brown is going to be before you tomorrow, and I think it's probably better to ask him, since this is his report and his conclusion and only he can really explain why he thinks the OPP is an appropriate vehicle to review the work--not to, as you quite rightly pointed out, undertake a new investigation, but to review the work of the Ottawa Police Service. I think if you look on page 21 of his report, you get a sense of why he took the approach he did, because he asks the question, “Does the fact that the OPS investigation was not independent”--in Mr. Brown's opinion of the RCMP--“mean that it was inadequate or otherwise flawed?” That's the key question. And what he says is, “Possibly, but not necessarily.”

Independence is part of a good process--we would all agree with that--but lack of independence does not necessarily mean that people acted inappropriately. I think that gives you a flavour of the reasoning that Mr. Brown used to conclude that rather than redo an investigation, let's have the OPP take a look at how the investigation was conducted, and if they concluded that in spite of the lack of perception of independence there were no flaws in the conduct of the investigation, the result should stand.

I would suggest, in all humility, that you should probably ask Mr. Brown tomorrow, because he would be much better equipped to explain his reasoning in relation to why he chose that approach as opposed to some other.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. McLellan, Mr. McGuinty.

Mr. Williams, four minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Ebbs, you've been quiet this afternoon. Nobody has asked you too many questions. As the chair of the RCMP External Review Committee, who does your committee report to?

[Catherine Ebbs]

The committee is an independent agency that's part of the portfolio of the Department of Public Safety. We table our annual report to Parliament through the Minister of Public Safety.

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

Thank you very much.

I noticed in your comments here, or your opening statement, that you ensure transparency, fairness, impartiality, and independence. Yet you can only accept complaints lodged by the commissioner and not by any other member of the force. Do you consider that to be fair and independent?

[Catherine Ebbs]

As I mentioned before, it's the act that sets out the—