The RCMP should expand its criminal probe into George Radwanski's alleged mismanagement and misspending at the Privacy Commission to include an examination of a previously unknown $35,000 personal loan he received from his chief of staff, opposition MPs said yesterday. RCMP investigators should examine potential links between the loan Mr. Radwanski received in 2001 from Arthur Lamarche, his chief of staff, and the privacy commissioner's subsequent decisions to boost the same bureaucrat's pay and pension benefits by more than 20 per cent, the opposition MPs said. The calls for an expanded probe came as ethics counsellor Howard Wilson said Mr. Radwanski never declared the personal loan to his office as required by the federal ethics code. Manitoba NDP MP Pat Martin, who was a member of a Commons committee that investigated Mr. Radwanski this summer, was beside himself over the loan. "I'm flabbergasted. I thought I'd seen it all with this guy and more keeps surfacing. I want the RCMP investigation expanded to include this loan. He's got more gall than Caesar," he said. "Though Mr. Radwanski denies any connection between the loan from his chief of staff and the subsequent pay increases received by this person, it's hard for ordinary people not to wonder whether a connection does exist," added John Williams, Canadian Alliance MP and chairman of the Commons public accounts committee. "That's why we need the RCMP to take a long, hard look at it. Mr. Wilson said that while Mr. Radwanski was required to report getting a $35,000 personal loan from Mr. Lamarche in the financial reports that he and other public officer holders must file with federal ethics officials, his office had been unaware of the loan until it was reported in the news.
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