NDP sidetrack bid to force Alberta Justice officials to answer 'tobaccogate' questions

The NDP majority on the legislature's public accounts committee sidestepped an attempt by the Opposition Wildrose party Tuesday to force Alberta Justice officials to testify about their role in the tobacco-litigation scandal.

Last week, the Wildrose signalled it wanted justice civil servants to answer questions at a public accounts committee meeting, with the end goal of forcing the committee to ask Auditor General Merwan Saher to investigate how the contract for a $10-billion tobacco litigation came to be manipulated.

But on Monday, Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley cut the legs out from under the Wildrose plan.

She announced a review of the 2013 ethics investigation into conflict-of-interest allegations against former premier Alison Redford. The ethics investigation focused on Redford's role in awarding the litigation contract to a legal consortium to which she had close personal and political ties. It cleared her of the allegations.

Ganley's review of the ethics investigation will be conducted by retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci.

The review announcement followed a recent CBC News investigation which revealed the supposedly independent selection process for the tobacco litigation contract had been manipulated. The CBC investigation further revealed the ethics investigation had not been provided with all relevant documents, some of which had been leaked to CBC News.

Wildrose justice critic Scott Cyr put forward a motion at Tuesday's public accounts committee to call as witnesses justice civil servants, in order for them to answer questions directly about what he referred to as "tobaccogate." Cyr wanted that to happen after the scheduled completion of Iacobucci's review on Feb. 29.

"I am hoping that in the first meeting in March of the next year, this committee will call all the senior officials that were involved in awarding this contract, so they can speak to the justice report that has provided the committee with insight into what happened and how to prevent it from ever happening again," Cyr told the committee.

"I think that it would be a tremendous service to Albertans and would be some of the most important work that this committee has ever undertaken."

Decision to call justice officials postponed

But NDP MLAs argued the committee should decide whether they need to call the civil servants after they read Iacobucci's report, which is to be publicly released.

"I think it is incumbent on us to step back and let due process happen," St. Albert NDP MLA Marie Renaud told the committee. "I think to get ahead of ourselves and schedule something when we don't know the outcome of this investigation, I think we need to let it happen and once we receive the information, we get together, we review it, and then make decisions going forward."

Edmonton NDP MLA Christina Gray put forward a "friendly" amendment to Cyr's motion, which effectively postponed the decision on whether to call civil servants until after Iacobucci's report is completed. The officials will be tentatively scheduled to appear and then a working committee will decide if they need to be heard.

Clearly outnumbered, Wildrose MLAs on the committee voted with NDP MLAs to unanimously accept the amendment.

CBC News obtained internal Alberta Justice documents which showed Redford, while justice minister, chose the last-ranked legal consortium for the potentially lucrative tobacco-litigation contract. Redford, through her lawyer, said she was not told by the ministry that the consortium had been ranked last.

There is nothing in the documents obtained by CBC News that show Redford saw the initial assessment by a review committee, comprised of senior justice and health ministry lawyers, which ranked the consortium last and effectively eliminated it from further consideration.

Inexplicably, the review committee abruptly changed its assessment within a day of sending it to Redford's executive assistant. It inserted the consortium back into the competition and removed its last-place ranking.

Within a week, Redford chose the consortium.