Top Mountie kept hands off Radwanski case, court told

By: Jim Brown, THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA - There was no top-level interference in the RCMP probe that led to criminal charges against former privacy commissioner George Radwanski, says the Mountie who headed the investigation.

Supt. Al Mathews, testifying Tuesday in Ontario Superior Court, said then-RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli never spoke to him about the politically volatile case or issued any directives on how to handle it.

"The responsibility for operating the file was mine," Mathews told Justice Paul Belanger. "Had there been any direction by the commissioner, we would have been very concerned, (but) it never came up at all."

Radwanski, who faces charges of fraud and breach of trust for alleged misuse of his office budget, has voiced concerns that the RCMP investigation may have been tainted by previous run-ins he had with Zaccardelli.

As privacy commissioner, he fought a bitter battle with the Mounties over a pilot project in which the force used a video camera to randomly monitor a downtown street in Kelowna, B.C.

Radwanski has also recounted a meeting of senior bureaucrats at which he chided Zaccardelli for past abuses of civil liberties by the force in the fight against Quebec separatism.

Zaccardelli's response, said Radwanski, was to jab a finger at him and declare: "That was an affront, and I won't forget it."

Radwanski was dismayed to learn later that the investigation targeting him was code-named Project Affront - a fact that he said fanned his fears that the Mounties were "out to get me."

Mathews, however, said the code name was picked by pure coincidence from a standard alphabetical list used by the force. The first choice had been Project Art, but that was discarded when someone realized it could be taken as a reference to Arthur Lamarche, Radwanski's former chief of staff.

Lamarche faces the same fraud and breach of trust charges as Radwanski. Both men have pleaded not guilty and a trial is scheduled for September - unless it's derailed by the current court challenge.

Radwanski's lawyer, Michael Crystal, is arguing for a stay of proceedings, claiming his client's rights were violated by both the RCMP and by officials in the office of Auditor General Sheila Fraser.

It was Fraser, in a 2003 report, who first raised allegations of misconduct in the privacy commissioner's office and referred the matter to the RCMP for further investigation.

She defended her actions at a news conference Tuesday, saying she and her staff followed "our usual process of validating facts" and gave Radwanski an opportunity to respond to the findings before they were made public.

Crystal contends that the Mounties, instead of conducting the follow-up investigation requested by Fraser, should have farmed the work out to another police force because of a potential conflict of interest arising from Radwanski's strained relations with Zaccardelli.

Mathews testified that he was aware - though only vaguely - of the dispute over the Kelowna surveillance camera. But he dismissed it as just one of the many bureaucratic battles that go on constantly in Ottawa.

"Honourable people have disagreements all the time," he said, insisting that was no reason to hand off the Radwanski investigation to another force.

He acknowledged that investigators kept the economic crime branch at RCMP headquarters briefed on the progress of the investigation. But he said that was standard procedure in any "sensitive" and high-profile case.

Mathews also challenged a claim by Radwanski and Crystal that the Mounties acted improperly by collecting key evidence without a search warrant.

He said the documents - including expense claims for travel, hospitality and other bills run up by Radwanski - were voluntarily handed over by Robert Marleau, who served as interim privacy commissioner after Radwanski's departure.

Mathews, who holds a law degree, maintained the arrangement was legal because the privacy commissioner's office had ostensibly been he "victim" in any fraud perpetrated on the government - and as the victim was entitled to share evidence with the police.

Crystal is arguing the evidence should be set aside and not used if the case goes on to trial.