Former inquiry lawyer pushes to air concerns
OTTAWA • A lawyer who recently resigned from the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women says the inquiry is trying to stop him from talking about his reasons for leaving.
Breen Ouellette, who went public last week about his decision to resign, says he received a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer representing the inquiry on Friday.
“We hereby demand that you stop making any public or private comments about the inquiry. We also require a signed written statement from you acknowledging that you will not make any public or private comments about the inquiry,” the letter reads. “Otherwise, the inquiry reserves the right to seek all remedies available to it.”
In an interview, Ouellette said he believes the “self-interest of the commissioners” has led them to try to silence him.
“They don’t want to be fired and replaced with new people,” he said. “They don’t want to be saddled with the public belief that the national inquiry has failed.”
Ouellette, who is Métis, said he was hired in April 2017 and tendered his resignation in June 2018. In a statement posted online last week, he said the government had “undermined the independence and impartiality of the national inquiry” and that he could not remain part of a process that he said was “speeding towards failure.”
He also asked the commissioners to allow him to publicly discuss the reasons for his departure, which he said he cannot do as a lawyer for the inquiry. But he says he’s had no response to this request, and the letter he received Friday was the first correspondence he’s had from the inquiry since his resignation. “You cannot disclose any confidential information about your client without your client’s consent,” it reads. “You have a duty of loyalty to your client.” Ouellette claims nothing he has said reveals confidential information.
In a statement, the national inquiry declined to speak to Ouellette’s resignation or the letter. “The national inquiry is an independent commission of inquiry and it has specific terms of reference,” it said.
In media interviews, Ouellette has been circumspect about his reasons for leaving. He claims government interference is hampering the inquiry, but says he’s unable to give details. Last week, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett’s office answered Ouellette’s claims by saying the inquiry is independent from the government and “exercises its powers such as requesting evidence by subpoena.”
Ouellette is now calling on the inquiry to let him speak specifically about his concerns around the subpoena process. “If I’ve got nothing worth saying, then why do they need me to stop raising my concerns?” he said. He also suggested he’s lost faith in the commissioners, though he spoke highly of the inquiry’s staff.
The national inquiry has been plagued by complaints of disorganization and poor communication almost since its inception, and has lost a number of high-profile staff members, including former lead legal counsel Susan Vella
THEY DON’T WANT TO BE FIRED AND REPLACED.
and several other lawyers. Last month, the federal government declined to give the inquiry a two-year extension it had been seeking, deciding instead to give it just an extra six months to wrap up its work. The inquiry’s final report is now due by April 30, 2019.
Last week, Ouellette said that decision shows the federal government is “trying to kill the national inquiry in a death by a thousand cuts.”
The inquiry gave Ouellette until the end of day Monday to provide a statement saying he would no longer speak about the organization. But Ouellette says he feels compelled to continue trying to make his concerns public.
“If your client has an internal conflict that is undermining impartiality, fairness, independence from government,” he said, “only the lawyers of a commission of inquiry are going to have that knowledge.”