Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Andrews.

We will now go to Mr. Calkins for seven minutes, please.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here today. This is a very interesting conversation, a very interesting dialogue that we're having here today.

I'm going to ask some general questions. Being a member of Parliament, of course, I have to comply with the rules that are in place, but there are cases that I would consider to be frivolous and vexatious cases brought forward simply for political reasons, political justification. However political it might be, that doesn't mean there isn't a just cause for bringing these complaints forward.

So my question to you is this. How do you handle that, when a complaint comes in? You need a letter. What needs to happen is prescribed, right? There's a letter that comes in. It needs to be signed. Some members of Parliament forget to sign their letters when they send them in, and that means that the investigation doesn't happen. That's how technical this can actually get.

[Mary Dawson]

Well, I go back to them and tell them what they need to do.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

They need to sign it. Yes, I know. I've been through this. It was about last Easter, I think. No, maybe not.

You talked about how you feel that given the increase in the requests coming in to your department, you want some more funding.

[Mary Dawson]

I'm not sure yet. I'm just saying that may be the case.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Maybe, okay.

I'm a farm boy. I guess the question for me is how you sort the wheat from the chaff. How do you make that initial screening to make sure that the time and effort you do spend, with the limited resources—the $7.1 million that your department does have—is spent actually pursuing things that are worthwhile in the public's interest rather than worthwhile pursuing in somebody's political interest?

[Mary Dawson]

With great difficulty. That is one of the challenges of the job, but if there's a legitimate request.... The request has to contain reasonable grounds and it has to identify what the requester thinks has been contravened. I also have the power to self-initiate, which I have done on occasion as well, but once it looks as if there's a legitimate complaint and there are reasonable grounds, then I would go forward. That would not be frivolous and vexatious. There may be a frivolous aspect to it or it may be treated in a frivolous way, but I just look at whether there's a case to be made and whether it should be looked into. But it's not always easy.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

No, I don't imagine it is.

You just commented that you have the ability to self-initiate. Does that mean you can also self-initiate upon further reflection of an individual member's request or complaint? For example, if a member might not have all of the facts or might not have nailed it specifically in the letter, you would have the ability then to self-initiate and further the investigation if you felt there were other aspects that were missed by the individual requester's letter. Is that correct?

[Mary Dawson]

I'd be more likely to go back to the requester and ask for more information, tell the requester I don't have enough information. I do that all the time. Or I might have a different slant on the situation and want to initiate in a different direction. I can do both and I can mix the two up.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Okay. If that's the case, then, with regard to the letter that Mr. Del Mastro has sent to you, you've obviously sent back a response to Ms. Turmel, because I believe the leadership of the party had changed during the time that the letters were sent.

I would hope, then, if you were requesting any clarification from Ms. Turmel, that you would have the ability to ask those kinds of questions for further information. Did you, in your letter back to Ms. Turmel, ask her who the chairs or co-chairs or vice-chairs or any political people were, any members of Parliament, or any public office holders? Or did you try to ask for a list of who's who when it comes to the leadership of a particular political convention, when it comes to third-party sponsorship, which is in direct contravention not only of the Canada Elections Act but also of the code of ethics?

[Mary Dawson]

I am in the middle of this matter, so I am not discussing it any further.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

You can't? Okay.

I would really hope you did. I understand you need to keep some confidentiality. I would really hope that your investigation looks at who was actually sitting at the top and making the calls and organizing this particular convention. I'm sure your office is more than capable of doing that, and I look forward to the response sometime in the future.

I would imagine that's used up most of my time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

No, you still have another couple of minutes.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Well let's get back to some general questions that you're able....

Okay, I'm going to share with Mr. Del Mastro. I think he has some salient things he want to get off his mind.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Calkins.

Subsection 14(1) of the code reads:

Neither a Member nor any member of a Member's family shall accept, directly or indirectly, any gift or other benefit, except compensation authorized by law, that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the Member in the exercise of a duty or function of his or her office.

(1.1) For greater certainty, subsection (1) applies to gifts or benefits:

a) related to attendance at a charitable or political event...

It's pretty clear to me that section 14 of the code indicates that any gift or benefit related to attendance at a charitable or political event—and as a Conservative, I'm not sure that the NDP convention qualifies very much as a political event I'd want to be at, but it certainly is one.

If we have tens of thousands—again, I refer to the Le Devoir story—it seems to me that this is clearly an infraction of section 14 of the code.

Mr. Angus said earlier that there is nothing to see here, so I guess we should just move on. But I read that as being something quite different, as an egregious violation of section 14. And as Mr. Calkins has indicated, clearly there was some organization at the very top of the NDP, perhaps involving deputy leader Libby Davies, as it was in her backyard, or Thomas Mulcair. And certainly Brian Topp would have to have had something to do with this, as president of the party, although he was not a member at the time, so he couldn't be investigated. But it would seem very clear to me that receiving tens of thousands of dollars for a political event would be an infraction of section 14 of the code.

[Mary Dawson]

I'm listening to all your comments, and I'm still considering the matter.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you.

We will now move to the second round.

Mr. Martin, welcome to our committee. You have five minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Ms. Davidson.

As the chair of another committee, I just want to point out at the beginning that it's sort of a pattern or a motif that we seem to be seeing at the start of this 41st Parliament, where the Conservatives have come on gangbusters to sabotage and undermine legitimate work of the committee by not allowing any opposition matters to be up for a subjective investigation or debate, by pretty much announcing here are the subjects we're going to study between now and Christmas and here are the witnesses we're going to have.

As Mr. Angus pointed out, they don't even seem interested in allowing any contrary witnesses in the studies--CBC, for example.

It really worries me, and it worries a lot of people, that the Conservatives have set out to sabotage and undermine the ability for committees to undertake meaningful work. In fact, they should take note, and I caution them, that they may be doing irreversible damage to the institution of Parliament if they systematically destroy the ability of committees to operate as they were intended to function.

Let me say to you, Ms. Dawson, and we're glad to have you here, that especially the first three-quarters of your presentation was a bit of a civics lesson on what the Office of the Ethics Commissioner does. I think the lesson is especially valuable to my colleagues across, because if there were penalties for frivolous and vexatious complaints, surely this would be one. I think there should be sanctions, especially when it's used to grandstand in such a....

I think Dean is far too good an MP to actually believe that this complaint was properly before the Ethics Commissioner. But he seems to be using a scattergun of stupidity lately, where he's inviting judges to appear before parliamentary committees knowing full well the constitutional separations between the legislative executive and the judiciary, and filing complaints to you, I think misusing the process just in order to grandstand on an issue that he knows full well isn't properly there.

I guess in response to this, there's only one investigation for criminal activity currently under way regarding election financing fraud, and that is the former president of the Conservative Party, the former chief fundraiser of the Conservative Party, the former campaign manager of the Conservative Party--all of whom are senators--for orchestrating the largest election fraud in Canadian history, the in-and-out scandal, which they learned in my home province of Manitoba, I must say, because the only person ever convicted of this is the current Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, charged, tried, and convicted of the same in-and-out scandal that became the prototype for the master scandal, the master fraud, that the Conservative Party undertook.

We tried to investigate these things in the last Parliament, as I think we were justified in doing, and this is some kind of revenge. This is some kind of bullying revenge so that they can grandstand and somehow change the channel over the real election fraud going on in this country.

Let me address just briefly some of Dean's remarks here. I mean, you can't tell me that their Conservative conventions don't have a cocktail party sponsored by big pharma or big oil--or “big ass” as my former leader used to call them. Any of those issues being dealt with by Elections Canada...they've found that it's perfectly legit.

The one thing I would point to is that an awful lot of our Ethics Commissioner's time has been dealt with investigating the Dykstra complaint, the Raitt complaint. I mean, let's talk about the propriety of that, of having the minister....

Or take the Paradis issue; let's talk about Christian Paradis, the Minister of Public Works. A bunch of construction contractors in Quebec who want to get Public Works contracts hold a big fundraising event for the Minister of Public Works. Can anybody draw a connection between buying a thousand-dollar ticket to a fundraising dinner for the Minister of Public Works and then, in the next couple of months, getting a big $9 million contract on the West Block, to some gang from...or all mobbed up by the Hells Angels? I mean, do you think there might be a connection there that's worthy of investigation from an ethical point of view?

Or Lisa Raitt; I mean, lobbyists hold fundraisers for her, in the former...you know, as a minister, in the port authority--

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Martin. Your time is up.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

This kind of back and forth serves no purpose.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

We will now move to Mr. Butt for five minutes, please.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I actually thought that the role of this committee was to respect our witnesses and ask them some questions, rather than going on rants and raves that achieve absolutely nothing. Talking about not respecting the committee process, Madam Chair, I think those last five minutes were disgraceful.

I'd like to go back to the reason we're here. We asked Ms. Dawson and her people to join us today so that we could learn more about the role of her office and perhaps look at one or two specific issues. This committee decided to call all four commissioners to start. We all wanted to hear from them, and we are doing that. That's why we're here, and that's why we appreciate Ms. Dawson's being here. We have started to learn more about each of these divisions or departments over which we have control, and I think that's a good thing.

Ms. Dawson, the first question I would ask of you is whether, if a member of Parliament were to phone a company or a union and solicit a sponsorship or donation for a political party, that would breach the code of ethics.

[Mary Dawson]

There's nothing in the code about fundraising. There is something in the act. Ministers and parliamentary secretaries do have a rule.