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Ottawa — Former federal privacy commissioner George Radwanski says he was “ambushed” by the auditor-general's staff and never given a proper chance to rebut accusations of mismanagement.
Mr. Radwanski, who quit his post under fire in 2003, now faces charges of fraud and breach of trust arising from a follow-up investigation by the RCMP. But defence lawyer Michael Crystal is asking Ontario Superior Court to stay the charges on grounds that his client was denied procedural fairness.
Mr. Radwanski, testifying Monday, said he wasn't given an opportunity to make his case to Auditor General Sheila Fraser until the report against him was nearly complete.
He said he thought from preliminary discussions with Ms. Fraser's officials that their meeting would be informal. Instead he found he would be giving testimony under oath in an “adversarial” setting.
“I was very upset, stressed,” Mr. Radwanski told Justice Paul Belanger. “I felt that I had somehow been misled, set up, ambushed.”
He said it was clear to him that the officials present had already formed negative conclusions about him and weren't really interested in his side of the story.
“I was scrambling to fend off attacks from all directions, trying my best to answer truthfully. My head was spinning.”
He said his questioners didn't give him adequate time to review relevant documents, nor did they advise him of any right to legal counsel.
When he saw an advance copy of Ms. Fraser's proposed report several weeks later, Mr. Radwanski said he was “literally sick” at allegations that he had intimidated staff at the privacy office and had used public money for personal gain.
He said he demanded — but didn't get — a personal meeting with Ms. Fraser to make his case one last time. “I felt I was entitled to look my accuser in the eye and tell her how unfair this was.”
Crown attorneys say they won't use Ms. Radwanski's statements to the auditor-general's office as evidence in the criminal case. But the defence says the subsequent police investigation flowed seamlessly from the initial findings by Ms. Fraser.
In a separate motion, Mr. Crystal is also demanding that key evidence gathered by the Mounties be set aside because they collected it without a valid search warrant.
Unless he succeeds in quashing the charges, Mr. Radwanski is scheduled to go on trial in September, along with his former chief of staff Arthur Lamarche, who also faces fraud and breach of trust charges. The accusations relate, among other things, to a $15,000 travel advance obtained by Mr. Radwanski and authorized by Mr. Lamarche.
