Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin today's meeting, May 9, of the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs.

Welcome, all members. I appreciate that you came out this morning. Before we begin, I would like to remind members that at the conclusion of the initial part of the meeting, I would like members to stick around for just a few moments so that we can discuss a little about future business.

Without further ado, Dr. Shapiro, thank you very much for coming out. It's indeed an honour to have you before the committee this morning. I would offer you a few minutes to introduce yourself, as well as your officials, to some of the newer members. Thank you.

[Bernard Shapiro, Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, first I wish to thank you for having invited me to meet with the committee so early in the new Parliament. As well, I wish to congratulate you, Mr. Goodyear, on your election to the chair of this committee. I also wish to congratulate Mr. Guimond and Mr. Proulx who were elected vice-chairs. I wish the committee all the best in its proceedings and business. My office and I look forward to working with you.

I do have very brief opening remarks with respect to various issues related to the conflict of interest code for members of the House of Commons, which I hereafter call the members' code.

Before I proceed, I wish to introduce, as you suggested, the Deputy Ethics Commissioner, Robert Benson, who is with me today; and also Micheline Rondeau-Parent, who is the director of communications and parliamentary liaison for the office.

In early April I sent the committee a relatively comprehensive briefing book outlining some of the issues on which we will need to work together. Some are outstanding from the last Parliament. Others are new. The three main issues that I wish to outline for the purposes of my introductory remarks are, first of all, the members' disclosure statement and compliance status; secondly, a number of administrative issues; and finally, some issues relative to inquiries.

Let me begin with the first issue, which is members' disclosure statements and compliance. The outstanding matter I'd like to bring to your attention is the new interim disclosure statement for members and their family members. It was developed in the last Parliament with the previously established subcommittee of this committee on the disclosure statement. Although the form itself has been used by the new members of the 39th Parliament, it was not, due to dissolution, officially approved by this standing committee. As I indicated in my letter last month, pursuant to section 30 of the members' code, a concurrence by the committee--and the House, if you wish--would be appreciated.

I wish to take this opportunity as well to provide the committee with the status of the members' compliance with the disclosure requirements in the current Parliament. I am pleased to confirm that all 68 new members submitted their disclosure statements within the 60-day period provided by the conflict of interest code for members of the House of Commons. I would like to thank the members for their cooperation in this regard.

With respect to returning members, they have all received their updated profile from my office, and there are presently just eleven members who have not yet responded. We are continuing to work the respective whips in relation to these members. We wish to acknowledge the excellent cooperation the whips have extended to our office in dealing with this issue.

Furthermore, we have received close to twenty disclosure summaries, which will be in the public registry of the 39th Parliament and thereby complete the compliance of these members very soon. Once again, I thank these members for their diligence in that regard.

Finally, in relation to compliance, I remind the committee as well that, at the request of the 38th Parliament subcommittee, we provided a proposed form to indicate the compliance status of all members, a form that was to be made available at the public registry in my office. To date, we have not received any feedback on this proposal, but within its consideration of various administrative rules in support of the code, the committee may wish to consider my office's proposal.

Let me now turn to a second issue, which relates in fact to rules of administration in support of the members' code. With my April letter I also forwarded to this committee some proposed rules in support of the administration of the members' code. These were provided to the 38th Parliament's procedure committee and were submitted pursuant to section 30 of the members' code. They relate to several different sections of the code, namely the disclosure statement, the reimbursement of costs associated with trusts, the inquiry process, the public registry and sponsored travel, among others.

As well, I tabled my second report on sponsored travel, as per section 15 of the members' code, which has been referred, as I understand it, to this committee. In it, two questions were brought to the attention of the committee, namely the interpretation of what we mean by “not wholly paid” and the status of travel sponsored by a private organization but paid for by the consolidated revenue fund--for example, the parliamentary centre--of one kind or another. You may wish to address these issues within your review of the administrative rules pursuant to section 30 of the code, and I would be pleased, of course, to work with you in this regard.

There are probably many other issues that could be raised, but the third issue I want to raise as an introduction to this morning's meeting has to do with the inquiries process, which is sections 27 to 29 of the code.

Following an undertaking with the previous Parliament's procedure committee, I provided you with a detailed draft of a set of procedural guidelines and a summary process chart in support of the conduct of inquiries pursuant to section 27 of the members' code. This is very much a working draft in progress for discussion and consideration of this committee. As it is a substantive and, I think, substantial document, I would be pleased to work with the full committee or any designated subcommittee, as I proposed in my April letter, in order to proceed with a detailed review.

In conclusion, my office and I very much welcome the opportunity to work with you in the next few months.

Along with the deputy commissioner, I will now be pleased to answer your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much, Dr. Shapiro.

Mr. Benson, would you like a few minutes?

[Robert Benson, Deputy Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner]

No, I'm fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay.

Members, as you know, we do a first round. Seven minutes seems to be a little tight, but I think we'll stick to seven minutes on the first round so we'll possibly have an opportunity for a third round.

I just want to caution everybody to keep your questions short so you'll get the answer you're looking for.

If I may, I'll offer the table to the opposition side.

Monsieur Proulx, please.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good day, Mr. Shapiro. Thank you for accepting our invitation. Thank you as well to Mr. Benson.

Mr. Shapiro, an article in this morning's newspaper talked about how some members and government officials accept so-called hockey freebies. These invitations are extended to members or ministers by lobbyists or companies that do business with the government. A reference was made to certain members who accepted invitations to watch the game from a box. As everyone knows, box seats are relatively pricey. I wish the Senators had won their games. At least Members of Parliament would have been there to cheer them on. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

What is your policy regarding such matters? I don't wish to mention any names, but the article refers to a certain MP who sought direction from your office before accepting this invitation.What is your position on requests of this nature from MPs, ministers or government officials? Does it come down to a question of judgment or do you simply wish to be informed or to have the facts on record so that if, for instance, a reporter brought the story to the public's attention, you'd be protected because you could say that you had approved the request? Please explain your policy so that the public can understand the need to proceed with caution when situations like this arise.

[Bernard Shapiro]

The first thing I want to say in response is that the policy is different for members of the House and for public office holders. It's not the same policy. It's different in two regards.

To take the easier one first,

one that does not require a great deal of thinking,

there's the question of the members of the House. Here the requirement is that any gift worth $500 or more be publicly declared. A hockey ticket or a series of them would be a gift and would need to be publicly declared if the accumulated value of the gift over a 12-month period was $500 or more. In that case, it would simply need to be declared and we would put it on the public registry.

For public office holders, the requirements are a lot more stringent in two respects. First of all, the number is $200 rather than $500; and secondly, we ask additional questions. It isn't enough to just disclose the gift. We want to know, for example, whether the donor is doing business with the federal government--as you mentioned is a possibility--or whether there are contract negotiations going on between the sponsor of the gift and whoever is being asked to come. So we ask a more difficult set of questions, where it is a matter of judgment and not just a matter of whether the gift is $200 or more over a 12-month period.

So that is the policy. Certainly, if a particular individual were to ask in advance we would be glad to give him our opinion on whether this was acceptable or not, depending on whether it was a public officer or a member of the House.

I hesitate to comment on the particular case you made. I also read the paper this morning, so I have that information. But it wouldn't be sufficient for me to make a comment now.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Am I to understand that if an MP or an officer were to ask for authorization, or advise you, it would automatically be a yes?

[Bernard Shapiro]

It would not automatically be--

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

What would bring you to refuse or to warn that there would be a danger of not following the code?

[Bernard Shapiro]

There are two issues. For the MP, it is to be a question of the value of the gift. You don't ask any further questions in the current policy; it's just the value of the gift. If it's high enough, it gets publicly declared. It's up to the public or whoever's interested in these things to decide whether that's appropriate or not.

For a public office holder the matter is different because there we will try to determine whether or not there is some contact or link between the donor and something that's in the area of responsibility of that particular public office holder, and therefore whether or not it would be seen to bias that person, in which case we would say that in our judgment it's not simply enough to declare it; it's not appropriate that they should accept the gift at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ms. Redman.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Shapiro, if I could just follow up, what would happen if your advice is not followed by an individual cabinet minister?

[Bernard Shapiro]

That would be a matter for us to inform the Prime Minister that the public officer was not in compliance with the code. I have no sanctions to impose. It would be up to the Prime Minister to take whatever action he thought was appropriate.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'm looking on page 108. Is there not a prohibition in the code?

[Bernard Shapiro]

There is.

Let me give you an example of something that's not an ethical issue. There is a prohibition in the law against stealing. It doesn't keep people from stealing from time to time, and there are penalties involved if people are found guilty of doing that. I have no power to impose sanctions on anyone. All I can do is report the event--in this case it was a public office holder--to the Prime Minister, whose job it would be to decide what, if anything, to do.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

How would that then be made public--or would it?

[Bernard Shapiro]

I am not sure and I don't want to answer you incorrectly. It would not be made public in general.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

You still have 30 seconds if you want to get another one out. You're good? All right.

We'll go to Mr. Reid, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Benson, for being here. It's always a pleasure to have you here in our little committee.

I wanted to ask a couple of things. Actually, I wanted to, if I could, just get the list from you, Professor Shapiro, of the items on which you're seeking to have the committee undertake its responsibilities under section 30 and make a recommendation to the House. Obviously there's a disclosure statement itself, a copy of which we have in a binder that was prepared for us. I'm not sure if it was prepared by the clerk or by you—okay, by you. So we have that disclosure statement for members and their families. What other items are there that you're looking for?

[Bernard Shapiro]

This matter that I raised a few minutes ago was an issue that arose during the committee meetings last year, during the last legislature, of having in the public registry certain information about the status of the members' files as a whole, not by member, but how many members are in compliance. Are there any out of compliance? How many have submitted their disclosure statements? How many have not, etc.? You asked us to provide some sort of template of the kind of simple information that might be reported, although without any attributions to specific people. We provided that. You may or may not like it; you may change your mind entirely about whether you think it's a good idea. You just need to discuss that so we can deal with the agenda item that came up last year.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

If you'll forgive me, under which tab is that in the items sent to us?

[Bernard Shapiro]

It's under tab 2 and it's the very last page in that tab.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay.

Was there anything else?

[Bernard Shapiro]

I did point out that the sponsor travel report has been referred to this committee; it's my understanding. And in that report, which came out in January last year, there are two relatively small but not trivial issues that need to be thought through, and that is the question of what we mean by “not wholly paid”, which has come up a number of times in the sponsor travel thing, and also the question of how we treat travel that is, let's say, sponsored by an NGO but actually paid for from some government subsidy or other, so the actual end payer is really the federal government, but in an indirect way. Do we treat that as something that's paid for by the federal government, in which case it doesn't need to be included, or do we not? That's an open question.