Thank you, Chair.
In looking at these types of offices, frankly, in different parts of the world--ombudsman offices, information and privacy commissioners, ethics commissioners, there is a great number of them, and the general ombudsman's role, of course, is very similar as well--I'm not aware of any that require a person to be a judge or a former judge, or to have legal training. What happens in effect in these offices is that if a person isn't a lawyer, then he or she always has commission counsel and relies on all sorts of advice. They have professional investigators to assist with investigative matters.
The typical qualification for this type of role is good judgment. While there are some aspects of executive powers put in here.... I'm not necessarily against this provision, but I feel it's necessary to point out that it's an unusual provision in these types of offices, and I'm familiar with ombudsman and commission-type offices in about 90 different countries. I used to be president of the International Ombudsman Institute. Some countries require judges, but very few.
So I'm not sure, given the type of assistance that office will necessarily have, in any event, that the role should require a person to be a former judge or have quasi-judicial training.
This may be clouding my thinking on this and I just want to get it on the table here. What really worries me is that this provision may not have been intended for this purpose but will give the impression of being intended to specifically eliminate Dr. Shapiro from consideration for this role. In passing this proposed act, we would effectively terminate his role. I'm worried that this would be a dishonourable role for this committee to play,
Perhaps I could suggest, therefore, an amendment to this section that would satisfy me, and that would be to grandfather--we'd have to get the right language--to in fact provide that this would not lead to the termination of Dr. Shapiro's employment as Ethics Commissioner.