Public Safety Committee on Dec. 7th, 2006

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

And I'll try to give you some good answers.

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

I hope so, because I know you're capable of doing just that when principles on which all political parties agree are involved.

In response to Mr. Holland, you indicated that to some extent, as Minister of Public Safety, you're not like a general in charge of an army. I have often been called a police boss and most likely you've been called the same thing occasionally. However, you know that the relationship is different.

However, law enforcement bodies can look to the responsible minister for moral leadership. I'd like to ask you a question about this very subject.

In your opinion, Mr. Day, what steps should a police officer take upon learning that an innocent person is in prison because of mistakes made by his subordinate officers?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

That's a good question, Mr. Chairman, but a difficult one as well.

In my opinion, if a police officer, especially a police chief, realizes that inappropriate action has been taken or that something wrong or illegal was done, he must immediately set the record straight and demand that those responsible for the wrongdoing be questioned immediately.

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

You've already answered the other question that I had for you, albeit succinctly. I imagine your response will be the same this time.

With respect to the Arar incident, we now know that more than likely, Mr. Arar was detained and deported to Syria as a result of erroneous information passed along to the Americans. We know that the chief of police himself believed in Mr. Arar's innocence. Isn't this the kind of information that should be conveyed to the minister? It comes down to trust and the minister needs to trust the chief of police.

After September 28, you knew that Commissioner Zaccardelli had erred on two nonetheless very important points. When he became convinced of Mr. Arar's innocence, he did nothing and made no attempt to secure his release. He kept ministers in the dark about his error, which could have resulted in his incarceration.

How can you continue to have confidence in Commissioner Zaccardelli?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

You've put your finger squarely on the problem, because we now realize that there are contradictions in his testimony. The Commissioner initially gave one version of the facts, while later, he provided another contradictory version. It wasn't until this past Monday that we realized how significant this contradictory testimony actually was.

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

Sir, between September 28 and the moment you learned about the inconsistencies in his testimony, you were in fact unaware that there were any inconsistencies. However, there are still two troubling facts about this case, namely that the Commissioner allowed Mr. Arar to languish in prison for over a year without taking any action and that he kept the ministers in the dark. These facts cannot be disputed. Isn't that serious enough to warrant your losing faith in RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I asked the very same question.

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

To whom did you ask that question?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I asked myself that question because as I said, when the ministers in the previous government realized that eventually they were going to have a major problem on their hands, they finally ordered an inquiry. I wondered why they had not asked the RCMP Commissioner any questions at the time. I find it rather odd that they did not put any questions to him at the time.

And because of the language here, I want to be careful to be specific, so I'll say this part in English, if you'll allow, for translation.

There is a line between somebody, for whatever reason, contradicting himself and perjury. The only person I have heard publicly accuse the commissioner of perjury, outside of the assembly, is Mr. Holland. That's a very serious accusation.

I've spent a lot of time with the commissioner over a lot of issues to do with safety and security. To this day, never once have I felt that the commissioner lied to me or tried deliberately in any way to lead me astray. I want to get that on the record. The only person who has publicly said that it's a matter of perjury is Mr. Holland.

There could be other reasons for the contradiction, and other reasons, as the commissioner has said, that finally resulted in his resignation. But I just want to be clear on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You have 30 seconds.

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

We know that two individuals are responsible for the error. Have you made any effort to identify the individuals who passed along the erroneous information to US authorities?.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I asked my officials to track them down. It's a difficult situation, but not so difficult that I cannot look for an answer, for two reasons. First, I want to know the truth. Secondly, our government was not in power at the time. The previous government was. Therefore, we don't have a problem with this, from a political standpoint. Officials are continuing their investigation. At this time, I don't have an answer to your questions. However, I'm continuing to press for answers and I hope they'll have some information for me.

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

Why haven't you put the question directly to Commissioner Zaccardelli?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Comartin, please, for seven minutes.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.

This is going to be somewhat unusual, but my role, and I think this committee's role, is to also look into the whole issue of ministerial responsibility. My questions are in part going to be directed in that regard. I am not, quite frankly, expecting that you may be able to answer these. You may have to go back to your staff. I know that a number of your officials are here with you today.

I find that there may be a further contradiction in Commissioner Zaccardelli's evidence. I want to point you specifically to page 303 of the analysis and recommendations volume of Mr. Justice O'Connor's report.

In that paragraph, the second full paragraph, he in fact discloses that--in my belief--either Commissioner Zaccardelli or some other senior person within the government knew earlier than when the report came out about the border lookouts and the documents that accused Mr. Arar and Dr. Mazigh of being Islamic extremists, which I think everybody on this committee thinks triggered his ultimate incarceration in Syria.

Commissioner Zaccardelli had put out in his letter, at paragraph four of page two, that he was never told. But the way the process works is that at some point—and this is what Justice O'Connor is referring to on page 303—the government claimed national security for these documents and would not disclose them, in the sense of allowing Justice O'Connor to disclose them publicly.

What he's saying in that paragraph is that in the fall of last year--it doesn't say that in the paragraph, but it would have been chronological--that was waived. But on two occasions, someone in the government would have had to make a decision to claim national security status for those documents and then waive them.

My analysis tells me that this would have been either the commissioner or somebody at his level of the RCMP, because those documents were within their control, I believe. It might have been somebody from the Border Services Agency; it could possibly have been CSIS; it might have been somebody in PCO, specifically the national security adviser; it could have been your predecessor.

I have three questions. First of all, do you know, at the time they decided they were going to claim national security for these documents, when that was waived? Second, in particular, was that waived when your administration came in or was it waived when it was the Liberal administration? Did it get all the way up to the ministerial level? Was the decision made at the ministerial level to either claim or waive the clearance for these documents, or was it at some lower level? If the decision was made at a lower level, was that ever reported to the ministerial level?

To go back to my opening comment, Mr. Minister, I think the problem we are having is that we have to be sure this never happens again to Mr. Arar or somebody else, and I don't think we can do that without this information. I think it falls into your lap now to let us know that.

I have to ask you, though, if that decision on the waiver was made during your administration, then why was something not done at that point rather than waiting another whole year? It would have been a good year. That decision to waive was made in the fall of 2005, and the O'Connor report didn't come out until the fall of 2006, almost a year later. For a whole year, Mr. Arar was sitting with his reputation besmirched. You know all the pressure that was on him. If that information was at your level at any point during that period of time, I would suggest to you that you would have had to do something about it.

I'll leave it at that. I don't know if you can answer any of this. If you can't, then I would like a commitment from you to this committee that you will give us answers to those questions.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I'll do my best to find out when the waiver took place, anything prior to my being there, so that would be the fall of 2005 that you're talking about.

In the process of a decision being made on what information should still be kept not public because of national security concerns, the areas that that fell under my purview were, of course, after assuming the file, and my instructions were that everything had to be public that absolutely could be, unless it was clearly a case that national security could be at risk. So there are two factors there.

First of all, I had to know for sure that Justice O'Connor had seen even material that was going to be blocked out and that nothing was kept from him. On page 10 of his report he said he did see all relevant information.

I made some decisions related to CSIS concerns--and it was CSIS, because you asked which force it would come from, CBSA or another force--related to information sharing that they felt could impair their proper relationships with other intelligence agencies--not just the U.S., but others. So a decision was made in a few areas, and they're marked there in the report. I would have made those final decisions in terms of saying yes, I concur with CSIS on these; I maybe don't concur on these. In certain areas it was my decision to say that in the interests of national security and the protection of our citizens, this has to be blocked out.

On those other waivers, I don't know where they came from, but I'll do my best to find out and report back to this committee.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

And also who made the decision.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Yes.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you.

If I can switch--

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You have about half a minute.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

With regard to the replacement of the commissioner, Mr. Broadbent in the last Parliament put forward a proposal, as part of the democratic reform, of establishing criteria for those senior positions and having some screening process by a parliamentary or an ad hoc committee. Have you given any consideration to the process you're going to use to replace the commissioner?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

We have given some consideration. Obviously we can't leave it unattended. I'm looking for guidance from around this table either related to process or to individuals. There is a process that's been followed in the past that we could follow and use with some precedent, but I want to make sure it's appropriate.

Very soon you will hear the name of a person who will be installed in that capacity on an interim basis, and then I'll look for your guidance on the process. Actually, I miss Mr. Broadbent's interventions, because he has a lot of good thoughts on that also.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. MacKenzie, for seven minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here.

I'd like to try to clear up a couple of the misconceptions that I believe have come from Mr. Holland's thing.

I read to you from the last meeting we had on Tuesday of this week the question that I had put to the commissioner, and this always speaks to the issue about the political interference. I think you, Minister, have addressed that. My question to Commissioner Zaccardelli was:

I'd just like to make this perfectly clear. Mr. Holland, you've tried to put on the record that there was political interference.

I would like the commissioner to make it perfectly clear to Mr. Holland, who doesn't understand the word “no”, that what you said was that you did not receive direction.

He seems to be more concerned about a period of time in September than in 2002, when his minister should have been asking the hard questions.

Was there any political interference? Very clearly, so that he understands.

My question to Commissioner Zaccardelli was, did he receive political interference or direction from you? Would you confirm that his answer, which was no, would be the same response from the minister's side?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Yes, I said at the start of my comments, and I'll say it again, I have never interfered in a political way with the commissioner--in any way whatsoever. That would be inappropriate.

I don't mind that question being asked. There's been some reference that I don't like tough questions; I like tough questions. Mr. Holland's questions aren't tough. Most of the time they're ridiculous, but they're not tough.

The other thing about questions is that I don't mind getting hit from committee members on tough stuff, but what I don't like is for anybody--Mr. Holland or anyone--to characterize a statement that has been made very clearly as something different. You can say, “I don't believe that”, but don't say the commissioner said I politically interfered, because the commissioner never said that. Mr. Holland said that again yesterday--I have the quote--and he doesn't want to retract it. That's his issue, but there has been no political interference. It would be inappropriate.

I can tell you that I have met with the commissioner many times so far in my tenure in office, because there are a lot of issues out there related to safety and security. There was one issue recently, the issue of cadet pay at a depot in Regina and the fact that cadets in training don't get paid. I don't think that's right. We're looking at that; we want to reverse it. It was a Liberal decision to first put them on allowance and then finally take it all away. There's a lot of competition right now for good young men and women in police forces, and the RCMP is at a disadvantage if they can't pay their cadets while they're in training.

I use that as an example of a discussion that would take a couple of hours for me, first of all, to comprehend, to understand. It's not that I'm interfering; that's a Treasury Board issue, and I have to make sure I have all the information. I'm giving you one little thing that was probably a two-hour discussion just to make sure I was up to speed when the item came up in Treasury Board.

I meet with the commissioner a lot, but I've never politically interfered.