Evidence of meeting #79 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was position.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I appreciate that.
As the last point, I think, that we'll have at this committee, I just want to know what your take is with respect to trust in public institutions. As the interim Ethics Commissioner, what do you envision as your role and the role of the office in ensuring that this public trust is maintained?
4:55 p.m.
Interim Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's a bit of a repeat of what I said before. I think that clearly for all public institutions, including ours, on trust or lack of credibility, etc., our prime task has to be to restore the public trust, and that can be done only by being transparent and open, and also by communicating what we do as much as we can, and communicating clearly and precisely.
To the extent that we can use social media, by all means, let's use them. If that's how people receive their news, then fine. I'll offer it to social media. There's no problem. Just make sure there's nothing in there that can be twisted, which somebody will do, or that is unclear. You have to be clear. It has to be understandable to the common man. I'm not writing for a legal scholar. I'm not writing for the law school. I'm writing for the people who vote. Do they understand what the ruling is and why we find that somebody has a conflict or doesn't have a conflict?
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much for your time today. We really appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Ms. Khalid.
Thank you, Commissioner.
That concludes our round of questioning. I've met a lot of political junkies in my life. By extension, we're all political junkies. I've never met a public service junkie before.
Commissioner, I want to thank you and Ms. Robinson-Dalpé for taking the time today to come before the committee. Thank you, sir, for accepting this role on an interim basis. I think your public service speaks for itself, and that service to Canadians speaks for itself. I'm not speaking on behalf of the committee but as chair of the committee. You've given me quite a bit of confidence today with the way you have responded to the questions and the way you are going to conduct yourself as commissioner on an interim basis.
I want to say to committee members that on Wednesday we have committee business. As of now, it's scheduled to be in camera. We did receive the interim report on our foreign interference study, which came to our accounts on Friday. I'll remind all members that it is still confidential. We have not dealt with it. I expect we'll have a discussion about this during committee business on Wednesday. We're going to talk about the schedule heading into the fall, as well as the report.
That concludes today's meeting.
Thank you, sir, on behalf of the committee and on behalf of Canadians.
The meeting is adjourned.