Public Safety Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

In this passive role, you didn't seem to ask the questions about the case that you were hearing about from all of these people. This is a case that could cost the taxpayers of Canada up to $400 million at this point, and maybe you didn't expect that to be the case at the time. You became the minister; it was at the time the leaks and all these things were happening, and yet you weren't asking all of those questions?

[Anne McLellan]

No. I became minister and my focus was getting to the bottom of it. We knew that the questions were growing, and my obligation, at the request of the Prime Minister, was to get to the bottom of this matter--hence the O'Connor inquiry. In fact, I believe, more so now than ever, that it was the responsible course of action, because now all Canadians understand what happened. That was my focus.

We knew that things had happened that had raised serious questions. Those questions were being raised by Mr. Arar and his own lawyer, being raised by the press and others, and my goal was to find and put in place a mechanism by which we could all get the facts so the rumour and the innuendoes and the leaks would hopefully stop and we would actually have an independent, credible third party be able to tell all of us what happened and why. That was my focus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to wrap it up.

We'll now begin the next round of questioning. Five-minute questions.

Mr. Cotler, please.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You had mentioned that you had been advised regarding Maher Arar that he was a “person of interest”. My question is, do you not believe that a Minister of Public Security in a post-9/11 universe, whoever that minister would be, should have been advised that the RCMP considered Maher Arar, or any other person who they might have had such views of, to be an Islamic extremist associated with al-Qaeda? Should not this be the kind of information that would be normally conveyed to a Minister of Public Security?

[Anne McLellan]

One would presume so. In fact if one believed that someone was an Islamic extremist with al-Qaeda connections, this is indeed the kind of thing a Minister of Public Safety should know and should be informed of. As I said earlier, to the best of my recollection, Maher Arar was never described in those terms, by anyone, to me.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Let me put the same question in another context. Is it not somewhat strange that this information, which ought, in my view, to have been conveyed to whoever would be the Minister of Public Security in Canada, would have been conveyed to an American official while not being conveyed to a Canadian Minister of Public Security?

[Anne McLellan]

I don't know, and quite truthfully, while I read Mr. Easter's testimony, I do not remember whether you asked him and what his answer was, in terms of whether he ever received information that described Maher Arar in those terms. All I know is that I didn't receive such information. But if at some point the RCMP or CSIS believed someone to be an Islamic extremist with al-Qaeda connections, one would presume that this information would be conveyed to, at a minimum, the Minister of Public Safety.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

At a minimum, would it not be the case that the Minister of Public Security would also have then to be advised that the information was false and misleading? To put it another way, why should the U.S. authorities have had that false and misleading information corrected? The Canadian Minister of Public Security never had it corrected while the commission of inquiry was set up, or even before that.

I'll put it to you another way. Would it not have been something that, as the Minister of Public Security, you ought to have known? The government ought to have known in order to determine whether a commission of public inquiry was the appropriate mechanism or some other mechanism, shouldn't it?

[Anne McLellan]

I agree that it would have been useful information to have from the force, or whoever, that a mistake had been made and that incorrect information had been conveyed to authorities in the United States in relation to Maher Arar. My own view would be that this would lead to another set of issues that might very well lead to a public inquiry, or become part and parcel of a public inquiry, in relation to how that mistake could have been made, why it was made, and what the procedures are that should have been followed but weren't, and whether we need procedures and oversight mechanisms.

Yes, I take your point, that if some within the RCMP believed that false information had been provided to the Americans, as Minister of Public Safety I would have expected to be told that, if they understood that they had provided false information.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

As Minister of Public Safety, would you not have considered it appropriate...or in another way, inappropriate for you not to have been advised, or anyone to have been advised, during the entire time of the commission of inquiry, while misleading leaks continued to come out that Maher Arar in fact was not what had initially been said of him and what continued to be said of him? In other words, the public record was never corrected by the RCMP during the entire time that this information had been conveyed to the U.S., then corrected in the U.S.; the public record in Canada had never been corrected.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

That will have to be your final question for this round.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That is my final question.

[Anne McLellan]

I would say this. Once Mr. Justice O'Connor was put in place, it does not surprise me that those who were going to testify and be subject of his investigation would not, outside the inquiry, offer gratuitous comments. I would personally find that inappropriate. Mr. Justice O'Connor was in place; he was investigating this matter; he was going to hear testimony from the RCMP, from CSIS, and so on. That's why he was put in place, to be able to bring everything together in one place and make, we hoped, definitive conclusions around who knew what, when, and what was said by whom, and what the consequences of it were.

I agree that up until the appointment of Mr. Justice O'Connor and the decision to have the inquiry, if the RCMP knew that Maher Arar had been mis-described at any time and in their opinion was an innocent person, it would have been useful if not expected that they would so convey publicly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Monsieur Ménard, you'll have five minutes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you once again, Madam, for your cooperation. I believe you made the right decisions at the time this matter was brought to your attention.

Based on what you're saying, you would have preferred by far to see the United States agree to cooperate with Justice O'Connor. Correct?

[Anne McLellan]

Absolutely, that is the key piece that is missing.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I see. Nevertheless, you were all well aware of one thing. Canada may be working today with Syria to fight terrorism, but we are all well aware of that country's interrogation techniques and the types of prisons is has. Agreed?

[Anne McLellan]

That would be a fair assessment, based on a number of different pieces of information, including the fact-finding report done at the request of Mr. Justice O'Connor by the now president of UBC, Stephen Toope.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

To send a citizen to a Syrian jail is a serious act that cannot reasonably be justified, unless one seriously suspects that person of being linked to terrorist organizations.

[Anne McLellan]

If I were a Canadian government official and we were seeking to remove someone from this country and return them to Syria, I would be very concerned about that, because we signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Based on what we know of Syrian activities, I would be very concerned, in relation to the deportation or return of someone to Syria, if that person asserted that he or she was likely to be tortured.

The bottom line is, yes, I think that we as a country need to be concerned in terms of where we send Canadians or others, if we have reasonable suspicion of torture or other inhumane acts.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

It is still not known why the Americans deported Mr. Arar to Syria. Therefore, we're forced to speculate as to two possible reasons.

[Anne McLellan]

That's right.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

The Americans were able to return Mr. Arar to Syria after receiving inaccurate information from the RCMP, and on the basis of their own intelligence. This would seem to indicate that Mr. Arar was linked to terrorist organizations or that there was very good reason to believe he was. In any event, these reasons were sufficiently serious to deport him to Syria.

Even though they may have had their reasons, there is no excuse for the Americans not sharing them with Canadian authorities. If two countries engaged in the fight against terrorism exchange information and if one country has information that closely links a citizen from the other country to terrorism -- enough information to deport that citizen to Syria -- then it's natural that it would share that information with the other country. Yet, we are still in the dark as to the reasons involved.

[Anne McLellan]

As a matter of operational principle, I would agree that information should be shared.

I would go even further and say that I would be most concerned if they chose not to share that information. That would be something a prime minister would take up with a president, or someone in my position would take up with a John Ashcroft or a Tom Ridge, or whatever the case would be, if we believed that they had such information and were not willing to share it with their counterpart organizations in Canada.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Back when you were merely a minister, if Cabinet had known that the head of the RCMP was convinced of Mr. Arar's innocence and lack of ties to terrorism, do you believe the government would have acted differently to obtain his release from Syrian authorities?