House of Commons Hansard #118 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was questions.

Topics

Opposition Motion—Changes to the Standing OrdersBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

Is it agreed?

Opposition Motion—Changes to the Standing OrdersBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

The House resumed from September 26 consideration of Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

It being 6:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at report stage of Bill C-36.

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:30 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 2 to 52.

(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #235

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

I declare Motion No. 1 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 2 to 52 defeated.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

Central Nova Nova Scotia

Conservative

Peter MacKay ConservativeMinister of Justice

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in at report stage.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

All those opposed will please say nay.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:40 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

In my opinion the yeas have it.

[And five or more members having risen:]

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #236

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons ActGovernment Orders

6:45 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed from June 16 consideration of the motion.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

September 29th, 2014 / 6:50 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up here today and speak to the statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act.

Statutory reviews are quite important. They are put into the statute for an annual review so that every five years members of Parliament can review the conflict of interest legislation through their committee and make meaningful recommendations. In this case, we are talking about the five-year review of the Conflict of Interest Act. The whole idea is that a committee of members from all parties of the House will listen to a number of witnesses and make some meaningful recommendations.

In this case, the report that has been presented here today is a complete farce, because the eight or nine recommendations that we see at the end of this report do not even resemble the text of the report itself.

I will highlight that. The text of this report was well put together by our committee, by our analysts, and by those in the Library of Parliament. The committee listened to a lot of the recommendations that came from a number of different witnesses. We held a number of meetings on this subject with witnesses from different universities, Democracy Watch, the Privy Council, York University, the Canadian Bar Association, the office of the lobbying commissioner, and different conflict of interest commissioners from across the country, including our own conflict of interest commissioner, and that is where I will start with trying to compare why this report is such a farce.

Our own conflict of interest commissioner made some 75 recommendations through her experience with the Conflict of Interest Act. Some of them were quite technical, and others were quite in depth in nature. She made some really good recommendations through her testimony. One only needs to read the body of the report to realize some of the recommendations that our commissioner put forward.

However, they did not make their way into the recommendations at all, except for one or two. That is sad, because after we listened to all of the testimony she gave, we could not come up with even some of her recommendations.

The body of the report is very well put together. It talks about the commissioner coming before the committee and making some 75 different recommendations, such as inserting new chapters into the act, definitions, rules of conduct, compliance measures, post-employment roles, and administration and enforcement. According to the commissioner herself, they are quite broad. She stated:

Some are quite broad in scope, some target specific provisions of the Act, and others are largely technical in nature.

It did not even include some of the technical amendments that she was recommending from her experience with the act, nor did it include her general themes and priorities, such as increasing transparency around gifts and other advantages, strengthening the act's post-employment provisions, narrowing the overall broad prohibition on engaging in outside activities, narrowing the overall broad prohibition on holding controlled assets, introducing some disclosure and reporting obligations for non-reporting public office holders, addressing misinformation regarding her investigative work, adding administrative monetary penalties for breach of the act, and harmonizing the Conflict of Interest Act and the members' code, most of which were very practical in nature.

Other witnesses also came forward and made similar recommendations. There were some that varied a bit. As a committee, we heard from a lot of good witnesses and a lot of good individuals who spoke to the different areas of the act that needed to be changed.

Members should keep in mind that some of the recommendations that we looked at came from the Oliphant commission, which was one of the predecessors to this bill being brought forward to Parliament. There were some leftover recommendations from the Oliphant commission that we did not even entertain at all.

One of the things in the act that was talked about was post-employment and cooling-off periods for members of Parliament, particularly members of cabinet and parliamentary secretaries, and how some of the rules around that needed to be tightened up and adjusted. However, we did not see any of that make it into the recommendations of this report.

The Canadian Bar Association came forward, and Mr. Guy Giorno, a Conservative himself, made some good recommendations around changes to the act on the different assets people have and disclose, and how these changes needed to be made as well.

Both the Canadian Bar Association and the commissioner recommended giving the commissioner the ability to impose administrative monetary penalities in the act. Right now the commissioner cannot impose any fines or administer any penalty if someone contravenes the act.

We heard a lot of this during the testimony, and we could have taken the opportunity to incorporate some of these things and make a meaningful document. My recommendation to the people who write legislation for the government is to dive into this report, see what was recommended, and see what people actually put forward as concrete suggestions in trying to modernize and update our conflict of interest legislation.

As I mentioned, this was a statutory review. It only comes around every five years, so when it comes, we have to look at some meaningful recommendations. I would not expect the government to take all the recommendations; I get that, but at least when making recommendations, the government should come back to what we heard and to some of the suggestions that were made.

It is disappointing that this report does not reflect the hard work of the committee. As I said, some of the witnesses had some very good suggestions, but they were completely ignored.

I do not think that this report has done Parliament any good. It has not managed to strengthen our conflict of interest legislation at all.

I wanted to make those few comments on this report. I and the Liberal Party will present a minority report in which we outline what I have spoken about here today.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:55 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague, because he sat on this committee alongside me.

We went into this committee to deal with a very important piece of legislation on parliamentary rules, the Conflict of Interest Act, which is a commitment that the current Conservative government made following the sponsorship scandal to ensure that there was some level of credibility and accountability for public office holders. However, what we saw in these hearings was unprecedented in anything that I have ever seen in Parliament.

Numerous credible witnesses were invited to come forward, untold tens of thousands of dollars were spent hearing testimony, and then the Conservatives came in with recommendations that did not reflect in any way anything that had been said by anybody, so what is being perpetuated on the Canadian people and the parliamentary system is a fraud. The work of the committee was completely ignored. The recommendations that were brought forward have nothing to do with any of the testimony.

However, the most serious and more egregious abuse is the fact that now the designation of a public office holder will include anybody who is in a bargaining unit under the federal government.

We asked the ethics commissioner about this, and she told us that it would be in the nature of 260,000 people that she would have administer. It would mean that if someone was working in a call centre for Service Canada in Moose Jaw, that person would now be under the same rules as the finance minister. We see a government undermining the act by including anybody in any position anywhere in this country. An office cleaner for the federal government could suddenly be under the act.

The ethics commissioner said that it would swamp her office and make it absolutely impossible to function. It would also allow for all the backroom corruption, all the insiders, and all the friends to basically get off scot-free, because they will be thrown into this massively large pool that has nothing to do with what the Conflict of Interest Act is supposed to be about.

I would ask my hon. colleague what he feels the message is that the Conservatives are sending in terms of not only their contempt for the parliamentary and committee process and for all the witnesses who came forward, but also for the fundamental act that got them elected in 2006, which was their promise to bring transparency and accountability to this House.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

7 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with my hon. colleague from Timmins—James Bay.

First, on his point about the definition of “public office holder”, absolutely, broadening the scope of the Conflict of Interest Act to some 215,000 individuals in the public service is ludicrous. One of the things the commissioner told us is that with the number that she has now, it is manageable to talk and deal with those individuals one on one if they have something that could be a potential conflict. It would just bring a huge amount of unneeded work to the office of the conflict of interest commissioner.

When we look at public office holders, do we want to tighten up that definition? Do we want to bring it down to certain levels, such as deputy ministers and directors? Maybe, and let us have that discussion, but to broadly take it to all the members of collective bargaining with the Government Canada would make it totally unmanageable and unrealistic.

The member talked about how the government rode in on the white horse of accountability, but it might as well have been a pink My Little Pony, because everything the Conservatives railed against, everything they said they were going to change, and raise the bar on has not been done. We only need to look at the thing that the Conservatives tout the most, which is its “Accountable Government: A Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State - 2011”. They should read this guide at least once a month so it will sink in, because a lot of the things that they highlight in it to do with conflict of interest and other reasonable recommendations from ministers of the crown are completely ignored.

It is actually quite laughable when we take even the first letter signed by the Prime Minister to his ministers. We get to about the second paragraph and we can point out that they are not practising that. They are not doing that. That is not one of the rules that they are following.

It is quite disturbing that once they have come in, railed on this stuff and set the bar so high, they do not achieve it.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

7 p.m.

NDP

Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON

Mr. Speaker, this is basically what we have been seeing over and over again. It is a government that keeps saying it is all about transparency and openness. We heard the Minister of Foreign Affairs try to push that forward today in question period when we were talking about the war in Iraq.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I can see how people are just throwing their hands up in the air and asking, “What is this all about? Who should we trust?” They cannot trust the government. It keeps talking about transparency, but everything it does is against transparency.

Whether it is talking about the missing and murdered aboriginal women and the inquiry that needs to happen or whether it was the war in Afghanistan when we were trying to get all the documents together, there was no transparency and there continues to be no transparency. If anything, under the Conservative government, we have seen less and less transparency and more and more rights violations for regular Canadians.

Maybe my colleague could talk about that. I appreciate that he raised the issue. We have seen it in other committees, where what is being interpreted by the analysts gets all distorted, from what we have heard. Maybe he could talk about how the government distorts all of the information that is being provided to try to make Canadians believe that what it is saying is true. It keeps repeating it, but at the end of the day, it is really about taking rights away from people.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

7:05 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL

Mr. Speaker, I certainly understand why Canadians are throwing their hands up in the air, because as a parliamentarian, I often feel that I have to throw my hands up in the air and do not realize what is actually going on at committee.

Yes, in this place, there is theatre. There are questions. There is dodging. There is political jockeying going on. Everyone says that we have a great committee system; get something into committee and we will do well.

From my experience in the six short years that I have been here, I do not see the committee system working any better than Parliament does during question period. That is what is so frustrating. We hear this report. We spend hours and hours of time on a report. We get near the end and we think in good faith that the government will say to the other members of the committee, “Here are some avenues that we can give on. Here is what we definitely want to see in it. Do you agree with those? Let us go through the recommendations.”

In this particular one, we had some 100 recommendations brought forward, 75 of which were from the commissioner. One would think we would go through them one by one and see if we had consensus and maybe we would have 10 that we are not going to get consensus on. That is how things should work. They did not even try to get consensus on any of these recommendations.

What the Conservative government does time and time again in committee is it comes in, takes out the pages from the analyst with the recommendations, throws them out, inserts its own pages and passes it off as a report of Parliament.

It is really sad to see that our committee structure is not working and functioning as it should.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

7:05 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, in 2006, the Conservatives promised to give the ethics commissioner power to fine violators, enshrine the Conflict of Interest Code into law, allow members of the public, not just politicians, to make complaints to the ethics commissioner, make part-time or non-remunerated ministerial advisers subject to the ethics code. All that has been thrown out. Instead, they have gone after people who clean buildings for the federal government.

I ask my hon. colleague why he thinks it is that the Conservatives ran on a promise of accountability and then when it came to fixing this act, completely shredded it.

Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

7:05 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL

Mr. Speaker, if I am not mistaken, some of those things the member just mentioned came right out of the Conservative platform. We often see stuff that is on the Conservatives' platform, but when we try to insert their own words into a report or a recommendation, it does not happen. It bewilders me why the government would do this.

There are some really good people on committees, some really good members of Parliament who listen to this stuff. It is really too bad that this cannot happen.

Maybe, as the old adage goes, once members are in a long, tired government, they get this way. The only way I could chalk this up is that Conservatives have been in government so long they think they can railroad and get away with anything they want at committee and in Parliament.