RCMP Watch

Scott Deveau - Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press

Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli’s days may be numbered.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed “concern” over the RCMP commissioner’s conflicting testimony before a Commons committee over what information had been shared with U.S. authorities in the case of Maher Arar.

Mr. Harper said he wants the matter investigated.

Mr. Zaccardelli admitted that he had made a “mistake” in leading a Commons committee to believe he knew as early as 2002 that the RCMP had shared with U.S. authorities inaccurate information linking Mr. Arar to al-Qaeda.

He said on Tuesday that it wasn’t until Justice Dennis O’Connor released his report into the matter just two months ago that the RCMP’s upper ranks became aware of the erroneous reports being shared with U.S. officials.

“It is important to reiterate that no senior staff, including myself, were told of the inaccuracies in the information provided to the Americans,” Mr. Zaccardelli testified Tuesday.

Under questioning in the Commons, Mr. Harper said he was surprised by Mr. Zaccardelli’s comments and the government will study the testimony he delivered Tuesday before a Common committee.

The prime minister is promising an “objective, professional and dispassionate” investigation that “will be done with full regard to due process.”

A Liberal MP accused the RCMP commissioner of perjuring himself in delivering the different accounts of who knew what, and when.

Vice-chair of the committee and Liberal MP Mark Holland pointed to eight separate references in Mr. Zaccardelli’s previous testimony where he had indicated that the RCMP had tried to correct “inaccurate” information about Mr. Arar with U.S. officials as early as 2002.

“We’ve now got Mr. Zaccardelli in my opinion perjuring himself before a parliamentary committee,” Mr. Holland told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday.

Mr. Zaccardelli resisted calls for his resignation, saying that he recognized it was a “cardinal sin” for a government official to willfully withhold or misrepresent the facts of a case to a minister.

“If I had been guilty of such actions, no one would have to ask for my resignation,” he said Tuesday, adding that all the information about what went wrong with Mr. Arar’s case had no been put together until the O’Connor report was released.

“We were unaware of some important information until the completion of Justice O’Connor’s inquiry this year. My colleagues and I deeply regret that mistakes were made. But it is important to recognize that at all times we acted in good faith.”

Mr. Zaccardelli’s testimony dominated Question Period Tuesday, where Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion wasted no time in asking the government if it intended to fire the RCMP commissioner.

“This is no longer simply an issue about showing the confidence,” Mr. Dion said.

The committee took the unusual step Tuesday of asking the RCMP chief to swear on the bible before his testimony, something he was not asked to do at his first appearance before the committee.

Mr. Zaccardelli said he had recognized the discrepancies himself in reviewing his previous testimony and that he had come before the committee again to “set the record straight.”

“I recognized that I made a mistake in inferring or leaving an impression that I knew information about those mistakes in 2002 when, in fact, I couldn’t have known,” Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday. “I knew it in 2006.”

Mr. Zaccardelli said that the last time he came before the committee he was too focused on the recommendations contained in the Arar report and did not have time to accurately bring himself up to speed on who knew what and when.

He told the committee at that time that he found out investigators were speaking with U.S. officials while Mr. Arar was in detention in New York prior to his deportation to Syria in 2002.

“I learned that, in that process, they tried to correct what was labelled as false and misleading information. That is my first point of knowledge,” Mr. Zaccardelli told the committee in September.

But Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday he realized that his previous comments were “not as precise as they possibly have could have been” and that he needed to clarify them before the committee.

He said he had already written a letter to the committee to that affect when he realized his mistake.

Mr. Zaccardelli was put in a tough spot following his previous testimony, after a succession of former cabinet ministers denied any knowledge of the RCMP erroneously labelling Mr. Arar as an Islamic extremist linked to al-Qaeda until after the inquiry reported it two months ago.

If he had known about the false information as early as 2002, as he had apparently previously testified, he would then have to explain why no ministers charged with overseeing RCMP activities were informed about it.

Mr. Zaccardelli attempted to clarify the discrepancies in his testimonies Tuesday.

He said three discs containing extensive documentary information were shared with U.S. officials at the time of Mr. Arar’s deportation to Syria, including the erroneous reports about Mr. Arar.

He testified Tuesday that while he knew that some information was shared with U.S. officials at the time of Mr. Arar’s deportation, he was not aware of the erroneous material being shared until the inquiry uncovered it in September.

Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday that when he had previously testified he tried to correct false information in 2002 about Mr. Arar, he was talking about when he told U.S. officials that Canadian authorities had no evidence linking Mr. Arar to al-Qaeda or any evidence to justify his arrest.

“That should have had the effect of correcting the false information that they may have had,” Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday.

Mr. Arar’s lawyer Lorne Waldman said he too was concerned by Mr. Zaccardelli’s testimony.

“These are two completely contradictory versions, and it’s shocking that the head of the RCMP would be caught in such a blatant contradiction,” Mr. Waldman said in an interview with the CBC.

“Either version creates grave concern. If he knew, he remained silent and didn’t do anything to protect an innocent man for over a year. But if he didn’t know, which is what he’s saying today, then this leads to a whole series of questions. Who’s running the RCMP?”

Even some Tories joined in the chorus of concern over what they heard Tuesday.

Dave MacKenzie, the Tory parliamentary secretary to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, observed that “Canadians legitimately would question what’s happened here.”

Another Conservative, Gord Brown, called it a “tragic episode in the storied history of the RCMP” and wondered how Mr. Zaccardelli could have remained unaware of key facts in the case for four years.

“Doesn’t this suggest you really failed in your duties as commissioner of the RCMP?” Mr. Brown asked.

“That’s a good question,” Mr. Zaccardelli responded — before quickly adding that the Mounties conduct thousands of investigations at any one time and he can’t be on top of them all.