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(Globe and Mail) – The House of Commons voted Thursday to find RCMP Deputy Commissioner Barbara George in contempt of Parliament. The vote was held shortly after 10 a.m. EDT Thursday and supported by all four party House leaders, said Liberal MP Shawn Murphy.

It’s not clear what this means for George. In theory, the rarely used contempt procedure could carry punishment ranging from admonishment to jail time.

Murphy, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said jail time is out of the question.

“It was just a statement of our rebuke,” he said.
“This is a very confusing area of the law. It’s a very complex. Systems that we operate under here are arcane and they go back centuries.”

Fellow committee member and Liberal MP Mark Holland said in an e-mail to The Canadian Press that the matter now falls to the Mounties.

“It is quite a condemnation by Parliament,” he wrote. “It is a very rare move.”

RCMP spokeswoman Constable Pat Flood said Commissioner William Elliott is considering the finding and will eventually decide how to proceed.

Deputy Commissioner George is currently on leave but is still an RCMP employee, Constable Flood added.

“We take this report and the report on the incident and the action by the House of Commons very seriously,” she said.

“This is unprecedented in recent history of the organization.”

Calls to Deputy Commissioner George’s residence and her lawyer weren’t immediately returned.

The parliamentary procedure to cite Deputy Commissioner George for contempt was launched in February when the 12-member public accounts committee voted unanimously to recommend her for contempt, asserting that she deliberately misled MPs.

The committee members had all taken issue with Deputy Commissioner George’s testimony, in which she told MPs with “absolute finality” that she did not have “anything whatsoever to do” with allegations a Mountie investigating the misappropriation of RCMP pension funds was removed from the file.

When e-mails and other testimony later contradicted her, Deputy Commissioner George was given the opportunity to explain during a two-hour appearance before the committee in December. She repeatedly denied that she ever misled or lied to the committee.

“That’s her story and she’s sticking to it,” said John Williams, a Conservative MP on the committee. “She should have resigned and apologized. Had she apologized to the committee, the committee would have accepted that apology and nothing else would have happened.”

Mr. Murphy and other committee members say they had no choice but to recommend the full House of Commons cite Deputy Commissioner George for contempt.

“It’s the only recourse that we have. There is nothing else,” Mr. Williams said. “We can’t say, ‘Well, we have a choice between a fine, imprisonment, admonishment’ or anything. You know we don’t have an array of things. We have only one – contempt. That is the only thing that we can do.”

Contempt of Parliament proceedings have been used only a handful of times in the past 100 years. Former privacy commissioner George Radwanski was cited in 2003 after the government operations and estimates committee felt he misled them with his testimony regarding allegations of wrongdoing at the commission. Mr. Milliken ruled then there was a prima facie question of privilege, but Mr. Radwanski apologized and the matter was over.

The MPs say contempt of Parliament is used so rarely because situations are often murky. But they believe the case of Ms. George is “black and white.”

When the same committee held public hearings into in the sponsorship scandal, there was some discussion of using the contempt measure against certain witnesses, said Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj. But no one was “absolutely sure” about their testimony, so they did not proceed.

This case is different, he argued: “Although it’s been looked at a number of times, this was the only case that nobody seemed to have reservations with the report the way we wrote it.”

Committee members said they also hope their actions will send a message to other potential committee witnesses.

“All we ask is the truth; surely that’s not much to ask for,” Mr. Williams said.

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