Public Safety Committee on Sept. 28th, 2006

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Yes, I believe...I have a lot of meetings. I know I had a meeting on Wednesday and on Thursday, and we've had a number of discussions, Mr. Chairman.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

In meeting with Mr. Day, what were the conversations that took place? Did they concern the O'Connor report and your response to the O'Connor report or the government's position with respect to the O'Connor report?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

We discussed a number of things, including, obviously, this report.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Commissioner, you had earlier told me that there was no political direction given with respect to the O'Connor report. You're now saying that you did meet with the minister, that you did discuss the report. In that meeting, was there a discussion about interaction with the media, a public statement, how you should handle this matter, how Minister Day should handle this matter?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, I meet with my minister, with my boss, on a regular basis and we discuss a wide latitude of issues. I am not prepared here, unless I am directed, Mr. Chairman, to get into personal discussions about the work and what we do with the minister.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Earlier, Commissioner, you said you did not receive any political direction with respect to this matter, and now you're being less clear on that. I'm wondering if you can tell me if at any point in the last nine days you wrote to Minister Day regarding your wish to respond to this report.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, my personal discussions and correspondence with the minister are personal relative to the work I'm doing.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Okay, but earlier you had stated that this was your decision, to wait until the committee asked you to come, and that you didn't express a desire to speak earlier. Now you're being less clear on that, in terms of whether or not you did in fact write to the minister over the last nine days with respect to your desire to make a statement.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, I've stated that I've been ready to come before the committee. I said this is the important committee that deals with this matter. I've been ready, and here I am answering your questions and making my statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'd like to just intervene for a minute.

I think, Mr. Holland, you'll recognize that Mr. Zaccardelli cannot violate cabinet confidences.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I'm just trying to match up the earlier statements with the questions and answers that are being given now.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

And the minister acknowledged it in the House.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

The minister acknowledged it in the House.

I just want to go to another question that comes back to the earlier question that I asked, and that is to specifically ask this time if you received any direction from Minister Day, verbally, in the meetings that you now say you had, or in writing or electronically, or from any other member of the government, suggesting you should restrict your access to the media on this matter.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, I have not received any instructions that I should restrict myself from the media at all. As a matter of fact, I was on Parliament Hill on Sunday honouring over 700 men and women who died in the line of duty. I saw the minister. I shook hands with him. His wife hugged me. We had a good conversation. I have not restricted myself. The media were there. They asked me a question, and I answered a couple of questions.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

In your meetings with Mr. Day...because earlier you said you didn't receive any political direction; now you're being less clear about that and saying that there was in fact a meeting that took place with Mr. Day over the last nine days. You can understand that it would be difficult to believe that when you met with Mr. Day in that intervening period you would not have discussed this case and how you were going to present this matter publicly.

So I would ask again, specifically with respect to dealing with this matter and the findings of the O'Connor report, did you either verbally or in written fashion, either electronically or otherwise, have any instructions from the minister with respect to how to handle this matter, or did you discuss how this matter should be handled with the media in your meetings with Mr. Day?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, the honourable member keeps saying that I'm trying to be less than clear on the answers. I will try to be very clear because I believe I've been consistently clear.

I've dealt with the minister. I've stated that. I've met with him a number of times. The minister has not given me any direction on how to deal with the media, whether I should meet with them or not. I did meet with them, because they were on Parliament Hill and I did talk to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Norlock, you'll have five minutes, please.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Commissioner, thank you for being here this morning. Thank you for your forthrightness and for your apology to Mr. Arar and family.

You alluded to specific changes that you made in your organization to ensure that such occurrences as we are meeting here today to discuss don't occur again.

I have two questions.

The first one is, specifically what changes in your organizational structure and reporting have you taken to ensure that there is proper supervision over such investigations?

Secondly, what are the philosophical or practical reasons why you would not wish to have an external police agency take a second look at what you're doing or specifically assist in an investigation where you may have a member or members who have broken the law? The reason I ask that question is related to some experiences I've seen in other police forces, whereby an external police force will come in to ensure that there is an independent oversight, just to make sure that justice not only is done but appears to have been done from an investigative point of view.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, in terms of the restructuring, a number of things have been done, but I believe the most fundamental change, which was very substantial for an organization like a police organization, was that in this area all files are centrally controlled, all operations are centrally controlled, all exchanges of information with our partners and so on are centrally vetted. That is a fundamental shift from the normal way police forces deal with their normal criminal investigation. That is the major shift.

Then the other day I had a meeting here in Ottawa with all my senior criminal people to re-emphasize that very issue: that nothing can be done in this field unless it is vetted and controlled and directed through Ottawa.

With respect, Mr. Chairman, to the issue of an outside agency possibly doing an investigation, in particular of the leak, in the RCMP we don't have a strict rule or policy on getting outside police forces to carry out certain investigations.

As I stated, leaks at this level are unique in this country...and they usually are not done by other police forces. So I was concerned about that. We do from time to time ask other police forces to do investigations for us. It is on a case by case basis.

There's what we've seen in the papers recently relative to certain investigations, where we had the Ottawa city police do an investigation for us. We've had the OPP do an investigation for us; we do it for them. Right throughout the country there are exchanges. And there are protocols; each province has a different protocol. When the tragedy happened in northern Manitoba with a particular shooting, we had somebody from the outside come in to review it.

So we do that. In this case, it was a judgment call by the most senior people, including myself, that we would do it, and we gave it the most serious consideration.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Let me go back to the last question. We have several large police forces in Canada that have in the past had experiences with information jeopardizing an investigation or being inappropriately released. Sometimes, or as is the case occasionally, these police forces will share best practices with respect to how they go about ensuring that standing orders, or the ways in which they conduct themselves from an administrative and investigative point of view, compare with those of other modern, large police forces.

I'm wondering if the RCMP undertakes those types of “best practices” sharing with other police forces, in this specific case with respect to leaks, if you contemplated doing it or do contemplate doing it.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, that's a very good point.

We do exchanges and best practices in all areas, whether it's aboriginal policing, serious crime investigations, drug investigations...and so on. We have multidisciplinary teams where we work together so that we learn from each other right on the ground.

I like the idea. I don't think we've ever done an exchange of best practices in this particular area—fortunately because there haven't been a whole lot of cases, when you consider it—but I like the idea and I accept your recommendation. I will look at that and try to do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'm sorry, the time is up.

We have gone full circle and we will now return to the same procedure we had to begin with. Mr. Cotler, you will lead off, followed by the Bloc, the New Democratic Party, and the Conservative Party.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Commissioner, you said you did not know that false or misleading information had been initially conveyed to the U.S., but you learned that it had been corrected during the time of his detention, which was presumably when you learned of this development.

My first question is, once you learned that false and misleading information conveyed to the U.S. authorities had been corrected, in your own words, why was the Canadian government not briefed about that fact? Why did the RCMP continue to convey false and misleading information to Canadian authorities after they had already corrected it with American authorities, and doing so even after Maher Arar's return to Canada?

Second, once you learned again about the false and misleading information to the United States, why did the RCMP, as Justice O'Connor has reported, not support the one voice initiative letter to Syria, which, as Justice O'Connor reports, undermined facilitating his earlier release and return to Canada? My question here is, were you involved in the discussions regarding the one voice initiative? If yes, were you supportive of it? If not, why were you not involved?

My third and last questions is, whether or not the damaging leaks came from the RCMP, once these damaging leaks were publicly made to the Canadian public, one year after the initial detention of Maher Arar, why did you not correct the public record? Since you knew that the false and misleading information had been corrected to the Americans one year earlier, Commissioner, why did you not speak up and correct the public record here in Canada, where Maher Arar's reputation and that of his family was being badly damaged, after it was clear that there was no evidence against him?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, I do not accept part of the premise of the questions that were asked.

With respect to the first question, the RCMP has never misled Canadian authorities relative to this matter. Absolutely not. When I became aware of the fact that there was erroneous information, attempts were made to speak with one voice. Discussions did take place relative to that between officials in Canada. A number of discussions took place. My officials were involved in those discussions. On one particular point, both the RCMP and CSIS did not agree with the position that was being advanced.

I accept Justice O'Connor's position that as Canadian officials and agencies we could have done better. I accept that. I was never personally called to a discussion or a meeting where I was asked to give input to or to discuss this issue. It was never raised to my level, but I knew about it and my officials were involved in those discussions.

In terms of the last point, as I said, we corrected that information with the American authorities. We also let the Canadian officials know. When we were asked for the timelines and when this matter became very public, we provided the best information we had to PCO and others, in terms of what our involvement was.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Commissioner, I don't believe you've answered a number of the questions, but specifically one of them.

When you had corrected the information with American authorities one year earlier, after Maher Arar's return from the imprisonment and ordeal, and public damaging leaks were made, and you knew at that time that Mr. Arar was not a suspect and the evidence was clear that he was not implicated in any terrorist activity, why did you not correct publicly those damaging leaks? Why did you allow headlines in Canadian newspapers to say, “Canada 100% sure that Maher Arar is involved in terrorist activity”, and this after his release and return to Canada from Syria?