Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Distinguished members of the committee, thank you for your time. I welcome the opportunity to discuss with you the facts surrounding the controversy associated with the invitation of Mr. Atwal to a reception hosted by the Canadian High Commission in Delhi

Public Safety committee  There were three main objectives to the briefing. The first was—as when you are in a crisis—trying to describe to the media the facts and the sequence of events as best as we knew them at that time. The second was to answer a lot of their questions, and when you look at all the a

Public Safety committee  When you look at the sequence of events, we were first alerted in Ottawa, and then in Ottawa we discovered the tip the Vancouver Sun reported on on the 23rd. We had not seen that paper before, because when we called them to talk about Mr. Atwal, they were aware and they thought w

Public Safety committee  When I talked about inaccurate information, there was that story about that other Canadian that came out around the same time, which suggested that after 38 years of being banned, so being on the Indian blacklist, he had been able to come to India because he was in the Prime Mini

Public Safety committee  Indeed, the first story was on February 23, and there was very little. On February 24, there was an extensive story that actually explained really well the process of being removed from the blacklist. Why did they do that? It is part of the Indian government trying to outreach to

Public Safety committee  Mr. Paul-Hus, my position is quite demanding, and honestly I don't have time to listen to all of the questions that are raised in the House of Commons. However, I did listen to some of the questions which were put to the Prime Minister on this topic. The Prime Minister acknowledg

Public Safety committee  It's quite simple. Mr. Paul-Hus, if I remember correctly, you are a former military man. I think you would not appreciate references to National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces being improperly used by people trying to create a false version of the facts for the purpose of

Public Safety committee  In the background briefings—without attribution—that I provided, I said clearly that we did not know who these people were. I don't know if they were from the private sector. I am telling you that now, and I have said it before several times, including during a briefing for journ

Public Safety committee  As I said to the media that evening, I am not in a position to confirm that. The Government of India has stated that it had nothing to do with this. That is in fact what I said to the media at the information session. Three of the eleven first news reports say that, and many oth

Public Safety committee  Normally, I only appear when I am asked to do so. If I understand correctly, last March 1, the committee launched a process to ask me to appear, but the process did not yield results. To tell you the truth, I was not even aware of that. As you may know, I often do not have my ele

Public Safety committee  To be very clear, I will say that a little before 10 o'clock on February 21, the director of CSIS advised me that Mr. Atwal's name was on the guest list. I immediately began searching for information through open sources like Google. Shortly after I obtained information in that m

Public Safety committee  That is correct. We then sent the information to Canada's High Commission in India, in New Delhi. The High Commission and the representatives of the PMO over there made the final decision, as they do during a state visit. Perhaps you would like to know why, given those circumst

Public Safety committee  I am glad you asked me that question, Mr. Dubé, because in fact, that synergy was present. As soon as we determined that it was Mr. Atwal who had been invited and that this would be considered a controversial situation, the invitation was withdrawn over there. The Prime Minister

Public Safety committee  Mr. Dubé, you can read the statement I just gave here. Officials conduct deep background briefings and do not normally need to…. You mentioned synergy. For all the governments I have served, I have always let the people at the PMO know what I was going to do. I do the same with

Public Safety committee  That's not quite accurate. There was a fair bit of stalling. He did not want me to speak to the committee because he thought the Leader of the Opposition should have the full story, meaning classified and unclassified information. As you can appreciate, when I made the decision