Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed "concern" over RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's conflicting Commons committee testimony Tuesday about the Maher Arar affair.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed concern over RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's testimony before a Commons committee, saying he wants the matter investigated.
(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Harper's comments during question period came amid calls by Opposition parties for Zaccardelli to resign or be fired.

Harper acknowledged his surprise at Zaccardelli's change of story about his knowledge of the Arar affair, and promised an "objective, professional and dispassionate" investigation

But the prime minister stopped short of saying the commissioner would be dismissed.

"You can't just go out and fire someone without due process," Harper said.

It's the first time Harper has expressed anything other than full confidence in the embattled commissioner.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli walks away from the media following his appearance before the public safety committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday.
(Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Arar, an Ottawa engineer born in Syria, was detained in the U.S. in September 2002 during a stopover in New York City while returning from a family vacation. Within days, he was deported to Syria, where he was held and tortured for months. U.S. authorities claimed he had links to al-Qaeda.

During Tuesday's question period, new Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion repeatedly demanded Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day account for what he knew about Zaccardelli's testimony before the commissioner appeared before the Commons committee.

"They should do the right thing right now," Dion said.

But Day said he "had no knowledge" the commissioner would change his story before Zaccardelli admitted his mistake in a speech Monday to the Canadian Club in Ottawa.  

Wanted to 'set the record straight'

Earlier Tuesday, Zaccardelli said he made a mistake when he gave inaccurate testimony to a Commons committee on public safety and national security in September about the Arar case, but declined to resign over the matter.

Zaccardelli appeared before the committee for a second time this week to "set the record straight."

"I believe some aspects of my prior testimony could have been more precise and more clearly stated. A number of misconceptions have resulted," Zaccardelli said.

In September, Zaccardelli told the committee he got involved in the case before Arar was detained, but on Monday and again on Tuesday, he insisted that he learned a lot more about the involvement of the RCMP after a public inquiry report was released by Justice Dennis O'Connor this fall.

The commissioner acknowledged he gave a conflicting timeline in his testimony to the committee about what the RCMP knew about the case and when, and he said he regrets making those mistakes, but he was in a rush to give testimony in September.

"I was very anxious to deal with the matter," he said.

Later, he said, he realized his testimony "was not as precise and as accurate as it could have been and I had made a mistake. I recognized that I made a mistake in …leaving an impression that I knew information about those mistakes in 2002 when, in fact, I couldn't have known.

"I knew it in 2006."

Zaccardelli told the committee that his mistake should not lead to his resignation. He said withholding information or misrepresenting facts is a "cardinal sin."

Zaccardelli, looking flushed at one point, said he has suffered in the last few weeks for having provided inaccurate testimony and has been under intense media scrutiny. 

"I tried to give as best an explanation as I could. I clearly made a mistake. The consequences have been severe for me. I am the only one who suffered as a result of that."

Explaining the contradictions

On Tuesday, to explain the contradictions, Zaccardelli gave a detailed account of events, saying Arar had been legitimately identified as a person of interest by the RCMP in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

For the first time, Zaccardelli said, the RCMP told U.S. authorities that it did not have any evidence against Arar that would link him to the militant group al-Qaeda. The RCMP told the Americans that it could not detain him or charge him with a criminal offence, or prevent him from returning to Canada.

"Mr. Arar was neither innocent or guilty to us. He was a person of interest," he said.

"RCMP investigators clearly informed U.S. officials that there was no evidence to support criminal charges against Mr. Arar in Canada, that he could not be prevented from entering Canada, and that we were unable to link him to al-Qaeda," Zaccardelli said, quoting from a letter he sent to the committee in November.

He said the letter was an attempt to correct the mistake in his earlier testimony: "This should have had the effect of correcting any inaccurate information that had been provided previously."

Arar went to the U.S. twice without incident after being identified as a person of interest and before he was detained. However, in spring 2002, the RCMP shared information with U.S. authorities in the form of three CDs, which Zaccardelli said included misinformation about Arar.

RCMP says no al-Qaeda link

Zaccardelli said after the sharing of information, the RCMP made it clear to the Americans, both in writing and verbally, that Arar could not be linked to al-Qaeda.

But Arar, who had gone to Tunisia with his family in July 2002, was detained on the way home in September 2002 and subsequently deported.

Zaccardelli said senior officers of the RCMP were not aware of the incorrect information given to the Americans about Arar in the CDs until the O'Connor report was released this fall. The report cleared Arar's name, laying much of the blame on the Mounties.

"No senior staff, including myself, were told of the inaccuracies in the information provided to the Americans," he said.

It was only when the report was released that the RCMP learned that Arar had been described as an Islamist extremist. Zaccardelli said at that point he realized the extent of what had gone wrong.

The commissioner said the RCMP "acted in good faith" throughout the time that Arar was identified as a person of interest, detained in the U.S., deported to Syria and tortured.

Zaccardelli said he did not know how much information the Americans had been given, and was only told the barest details about the case when Arar was in Syria.

Faces tough questions

Zaccardelli faced tough questioning from the all-party committee after his explanation.

The discrepancy in his testimony arose because in September, Zaccardelli told the committee that he first learned the RCMP had passed incorrect information about Arar on to U.S authorities shortly after Arar was deported to Syria in 2002.

Then on Monday during his speech, Zaccardelli said he first learned that the Mounties had passed wrong information about Arar to U.S authorities this fall.

Lorne Waldman, lawyer for Arar, said the testimony on Tuesday does not ring true. He said it is "shocking" that the commissioner has been caught in such a "blatant contradiction."

"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. If he didn't know, then this leads to a whole series of questions. Who is running the RCMP?

"How can it be that the most senior official in the RCMP didn't know what was happening in the most controversial file of his watch, a file that had international repercussions?"

With files from the Canadian Press