Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 6th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Laforest.

Mr. Lake, you have eight minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to talk a little about moving forward here. As Mr. Laforest mentioned, the committee objective is to ultimately ensure that this doesn't happen again.

In your opening statement, Ms. Conlin, you talked about working to address any gaps. Can you talk a little about the main gaps that you've identified through this process and about what you're doing to address them right now?

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

The work is ongoing, sir. I have been in the position for five months, and we are working with different policy centres as well as different organizations to ensure these gaps are addressed.

If you recall, on April 25, former Commissioner Beverley Busson stated to this committee that we would have an outreach initiative. One of my main objectives over the last few months has been to ensure that we have an outreach initiative in place for dealing with concerns or complaints that have come forward, perhaps as a result of wrongdoings or even just concerns that people have. This is one of the things that were put in place right after the April 25 committee meeting. Thirty-two people have brought concerns to our office, so I've been very busy working on that.

We also provide ethics education as part of our mandate. We have been working very closely with the RCMP HR learning and development section to ensure that the supervisory development course, the management development course, and the officer development course have an ethical component to them. We have a two-day ethical component.

The supervisory development course was piloted about a year ago, and it is rolling out nationally as we speak. We have a management development course that was piloted in August of this year. As I said before, these are all ongoing projects.

One of the other roles, which is very paramount, is the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. I now have someone in my office who has taken the lead on this. We are working, as I said before, with different organizations like the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner's office, as well as Treasury Board and the different policy centres within the RCMP, to ensure that our policies reflect the laws and that the members feel they can come forward without fear of reprisal.

These are the things I have been doing in the last five months. There's a lot that is ongoing, as you heard.

We are looking forward to some of the recommendations as a result of Mr. Brown's task force.

We know there is ongoing work to be done. What we need to do now is look at where we are, where we need to be, and then put a strategic plan with initiatives in place to drive and implement those. I don't know exactly what they all are now, because it is ongoing, but these are the things I have done in the last five months since I've taken over.

Thank you.

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

Mr. Spice, do you want to add something to that?

[John Spice]

Yes, thank you.

I think it's important to recognize that what Assistant Commissioner Conlin is doing presently was being done by my office.

The element that has to be there is being able to hold people accountable. That was not my role. I could call for an investigation or an administrative review under the internal disclosure on wrongdoing policies if things were not going as they should. And we did have occasion to do that. But at the end of the day, the individual who has to hold people accountable is the commissioner of the organization. You require his support and acknowledgement of his role to ensure it's effective. I think that whether the office of ethics and integrity is effective is very much contingent upon the willingness of the commissioner to follow through with his or her--

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

I think what you're saying is that you can make all the changes you want to the office and the role of the Integrity Commissioner, but ultimately if no one listens to what's said, it doesn't mean anything. Right?

[John Spice]

In short, yes.

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

I want to talk a bit about the culture and challenges of the RCMP and senior management and contrast that with where we are and where we're going.

Could either of you particularly speak to where we are right now? What has changed to this point that gives you more impact in the roles you're in?

[John Spice]

Understanding of course that I've been away for several years, I don't know what's going on. I could tell you what the culture was when I was there. I hope it has changed significantly, but I'll defer to Assistant Commissioner Conlin in that regard.

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

Sir, we have opportunities to learn from experiences. I take note of Mr. Brown and the findings in his report on culture. We are reviewing both our formal and informal systems to ensure that they're aligned to provide a culture based on ethical behaviour. I think it all goes to values.

This is not just the work for one area, such as the ethics office; this involves many areas. It involves HR and learning and development. What we need to do is look at developing managers as role models of ethical behaviour in the organization. We also need to be able to communicate the benefits of aligning our behaviour with the values of the organization.

We also have to ensure that our managers respond quickly and effectively to the issues in front of them, because the front-line managers have the most influence over the people who work with them. We also need a culture in which we welcome issues and deal with them, as opposed to trying to push them up the chain.

So right now we are looking at working with academia, and at working and seeing best practices. These things are what we're all looking at right now. We don't have a plan in place yet; nothing has been decided at this point in time. We are exploring all avenues now, but these are the things we're looking at, in concert with different people.

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

I have one final question.

A lot of the language sounds like my old human resources classes in university. I want to put a practical application to this. The best way to do this is to say that if the same thing happened—if Mr. Lewis came forward with information about something similar to this, and Mr. Macaulay brought forward some information today—what would happen differently?

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

Things would be dealt with, sir.

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

How so?

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

First, as Assistant Commissioner Spice (Retired) said, there is the will at the senior executive level to deal with the issues. I have the commitment that we are prepared as an organization to do so. We have learned from our experiences, and we are prepared to deal with the issues. I have full confidence that if those issues were to happen again and I went up to Commissioner Elliott, I would get the support from senior management that I require.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Mr. Christopherson, you have eight minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you both for your attendance this morning.

Starting from the structure, help me understand how you currently deal, and previously dealt, with the issue of wrongdoing, for instance. Someone comes forward under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. Part of your responsibilities now, Assistant Commissioner, would be to provide advice to employees who are considering disclosing wrongdoing.

Normally wrongdoing is not something that helps the organization in question; it's going to be negative. As part of the senior ranks, you are ultimately answerable to the commissioner and officers above you, and their primary concern—beyond the public interest, of course—is always the interests of the institution of the RCMP, and rightly so. But somebody coming forward has interests in exactly the opposite direction, and you might be asked to give advice.

How do you deal with the potential conflict of advising an individual on what the steps are for disclosing potential wrongdoing, which could do harm, and your line responsibility back to the commissioner to protect the RCMP?

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

I don't believe my role is to protect the RCMP. My role is to bring forth issues and wrongdoings that are brought to my attention. I'm not here for the organization; I'm here to make sure behaviour is ethical and that we do the right thing. That's my role in this job.

Perhaps sometimes the news I bring is not the news that people want to hear, but this is the role that I have to play. I have to bring that, because if I don't, who will?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Spice.

[John Spice]

Well, I agree with Sandra. Certainly the role of the ethics advisor is not to protect the organization; it's to ensure that, at the end of the day, we do the right thing. Now, whether or not it was the internal disclosure on wrongdoing policy or the present act—and I haven't read the present act—I can only presume that it's not terribly dissimilar from what I was working with as a policy.

But if somebody came forward with an issue, it was my role to take it, before it went outside the organization, to the Public Service Integrity Office. My role was to ensure that we had done everything we possibly could have internally, with the structure and mechanisms in place to deal with the complaint. Following those best efforts, if I was unable to advise the individual who had come to me with the complaint that something was being done, then I encouraged them in fact to go to the Public Service Integrity Office.

So there was never a protectionist view, from my perspective. I was there to do the right thing at all costs, notwithstanding friendships and other things.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

My concern would be that we would have to rely on the integrity of the individual in the position. Structurally, it still gives me some concern that somebody may come forward and ask for advice on how to do this without blowing their career, or for advice on all the things you would ask. Meanwhile, in the back of the assistant commissioner's mind, they're still thinking of the accountability I have to the commissioner. It just seems to me that the whole structural thing, where you're part of the command mechanism, doesn't necessarily lend itself to giving people the best advice vis-à-vis actions that might hurt the organization.

I don't have a lot of time, so can you incorporate your answer into that, if you don't mind?

I want to come back to the issue of what would be different. Mr. Lake asked the question I was looking at.

Assistant Commissioner, I appreciate and respect your answer, but I didn't hear a lot of meat. I didn't hear of steps. What I'd really like to hear, which I think is what Mr. Lake was seeking, is this. If this unfolded the same way—and we all know the story now, but with things being different in your office—what steps would there now be, different from what they were in the past, that might prevent us from getting to this point in time?

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

Well, I think the policies are basically very similar. Really, the person would come to my office and they would make a disclosure. I would work with the SRRs, or in concert with the SRRs. We would bring it up to the level we needed to bring it up to. The difference here is that I have the confidence that the senior executive and the Commissioner of the RCMP are prepared to act on any information that I bring forward.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that.

[A/Commr Sandra Conlin]

That is really the difference.

With regards to policies, the policies are very clear. But as I said earlier, we are working now with the different offices--the Public Service Integrity Commissioner's office, Treasury Board, professional standards, and all those areas--to look at whether our policy is meeting the needs today. If it isn't, we need to change it.

But as I said before, sir, these are some of the things that are ongoing. To say that the policy is written and changed to date, I can't say that. But all those avenues are being explored right now, as we speak.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Spice.

[John Spice]

You talked about the integrity of the individual, and that's really what it comes down to. You can have policies, you can have legislation, you can have any number of guidelines in place to deal with these sorts of issues, but without people with the integrity to ultimately take those forward to deal with the issue, you can't guarantee this wouldn't happen again. It's very much personnel-centric, if you will.