Yes, I move my amendment. I just wanted that as a preamble before moving my amendment. Now I will get to the crux of my amendment.
As I said, with proposed subsections 41.1(1), 41.1(2), and 41.1(3), as they are now written, any person could go before, for instance, a justice of the peace and swear out a complaint against a member on the issue of a personal trust. My amendment would still allow any person to do that, including the commissioner, but only before the appropriate standing committee of the House of Commons or, if it's a senator, the appropriate standing committee of the Senate. My amendment attempts to keep it within the authority of the House of Commons and ensures it doesn't involve judicial courts.
Clause 99, as it now stands, puts it in a statutory authority, removes it from the constitutional authority and autonomy of the House of Commons to regulate the conduct of its members, including the issue of members' trusts. My amendment attempts to bring it back in a limited way to the House of Commons so that rather than any person or the commissioner taking it before a judicial court, the complaint would have to be brought before the appropriate standing committee of Parliament, either the House of Commons or the Senate.
As well, the trigger within proposed section 41.3, as it now stands, is that the commissioner would review various trusts and make orders--for example, to wind up the trust. That's an example of an order that the commissioner would be able to make under proposed section 41.3 as it now stands. And it makes it an offence not to comply with the commissioner's order.
My amendment would create a new section, proposed section 41.5. I propose, instead, creating a new trigger. That trigger would be that once the commissioner creates an order under proposed section 41.3, his order would be provided to the standing committee of the House of Commons duly designated. The committee would then have 30 sitting days to consider either the public's or the commissioner's complaint, and so on, and order, and could then issue an opinion of the member of Parliament's compliance.
If we look at proposed subsections 41.5(3) and 41.5(4), the language already exists in the Parliament of Canada Act. One only has to look at section 52.6 of that act and subsequent. This process of stipulating that no court, judge, and so on can issue until the Board of Internal Economy has issued an opinion on an allegation that a member of Parliament has, for instance, misused the member's operating budget already exists. The way it exists is that no judge can issue a judgment and sentence, if the judgment is guilty, prior to the prosecutor providing the judge with an opinion of the designated House of Commons committee.
In the case of section 52.6, and so on, of the Parliament of Canada Act, it's the Board of Internal Economy that issues an opinion on the allegation of wrongdoing on the part of the MP, and the judge shall consider the opinion in his or her determination of whether an offence was created and, if an offence was created, the penalty, sanction, or sentence that should be imposed.
What my amendment attempts to do is to bring the authority not just to deal with allegations, but to deal with the issue of personal trusts that a member of Parliament may have, and to bring the authority of regulating that back into the House of Commons. It does not preclude there being a criminal proceeding taking place within the judicial courts, but that proceeding could not be concluded without the prosecutor tabling the evidence of the appropriate or designated House of Commons committee that deals with the issue within the House of Commons—tabling that opinion before the judge, and the judge having to take it into consideration.
This already exists with regard to the members' operating budgets and allegations of misuse. What my amendment strives to do—and this is on the advice of our parliamentary counsel and law clerk—is to take that same process and system and apply it to the issue of trusts that members may have or benefit from.
Thank you.