Evidence of meeting #6 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-2.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Earlier, you talked about preparations under way at your office to implement the provisions of the new Federal Accountability Act. You stated that this legislation will result in some changes, specifically, the fact that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner will now be able to initiate his own inquiry into any current or former public office holder.
What's new here? Is it that you now have the power to initiate your own inquiry, or is it the reference to “current or former”?
Bloc
Paule Brunelle Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
I'd like to continue in a similar vein, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shapiro, you stated that some of your recommendations have been acted on and that Bill C-2 has been amended to include, among other things, sanctions for breaches of post-employment prohibitions by lobbyists.
Can you be more specific about these sanctions? Would they apply to a former parliamentarian turned lobbyist? How about to a lobbyist turned parliamentarian? Can persons who have worked with parliamentarians become lobbyists?
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
The whole law does not apply to members of Parliament particularly because this is not the members' code; it's the public office holders' code. So it doesn't relate to what happens as a member of Parliament, or as a member of the Senate for that matter.
My concern with Bill C-2, as I've mentioned a number of times, both in front of the Senate committee and in the House of Commons, doesn't have to do with the issue of restrictions on lobbyists, or of, for example, the penalties. I think that's a useful kind of addition to have. There are many useful things in the proposed act. My concern has simply been the lack of principles enunciated in the preamble to the act that would enable us to understand what it is we're trying to achieve through this legislation and what the standard behaviour is that's being held up for public office holders, les titulaires de charges publiques. That's my major concern. I have others, but that's a whole different question. There are many good things in the act as well.
Bloc
Paule Brunelle Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
According to your report, your Office completed 1,196 cases in 2005-2006. To satisfy my curiosity, could you tell me what these cases consisted of primarily?
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
Not entirely, but these would primarily be new appointments to the office of a public office holder. We receive the confidential documents and then we try to make sure they've arranged their private affairs in a way that's suitable for their public responsibilities. That would be the major issue. Almost all of those would be that...either because they are new appointments or because there's an adjustment to be made because something has happened in the intervening year.
September 20th, 2006 / 4:05 p.m.
Liberal
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for this opportunity.
I was tuned into CPAC the night both you and Mr. Wilson were at the Senate. That generated some interest in the media as well, partly because if you took isolated comments out of the larger context, you would come away with the idea that both of you were quite critical of Bill C-2 in many areas.
I don't know if it was you or Mr. Wilson who said that by putting what is now the code for public office holders into legislation, it actually becomes more weakened as it becomes more rigid. That may have been attributed to Mr. Wilson and not you, but that was certainly the tone.
I guess I'd like you to explain that a little bit more, because elsewhere in your testimony you did admit that you liked aspects of Bill C-2 that expanded the code to the 2,400 part-time appointees, etc. So do you feel that the shortcoming is enough that it warrants amendment? Are you critical to the point at which you think you're better off under the current regime than what is being proposed under Bill C-2? I suppose that is the question.
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
I don't have an easy answer to that question, but you are quite right that I do have mixed views on the proposed legislation.
There are many good things in it. For example, the definitions are better than they were before. It covers more people. It provides for more public information. There is an expansion of the public registry. There are many things like that that I think are really steps forward in terms of the regime.
You are right that it was said by Mr. Wilson. I did not say that it weakened the regime. I did say that adopting it into legislation, on the one hand, has the value of announcing how important this is. It gives it a kind of status it might not otherwise have, but the reverse of that is that should you ever want to change the code, it's a much, much more complex procedure, for obvious reasons. And one could argue that one balances the other, without trying to say anything more specific than that.
My main concern with the legislation is not the various details that people have been focusing on, but on the question of its lack in the preamble--or wherever it's seen to be appropriate--of a set of principles that would be clear as to what the ethical standards are that are expected of public office holders. That, I think, is a flaw in the legislation. I don't mean it's a legal flaw or anything like that, but I think when you think about ethics more generally speaking, no set of rules will cover the ground. It isn't possible. So it's useful to have a set of principles, however minimal, and they certainly wouldn't have to be the ones that are currently in the code. That's a matter people need to consider.
It does give you a chance to interpret the legislation--and there's going to be a lot of interpretation that will be required as we go along--in the light of something that would make sense to the people subject to the legislation. I don't want to say it's a fatal flaw, but what you see in the legislation is a movement from what is called a principles-based regime to a rules-based regime. I think there are good arguments for both of those and I don't want to say it has to be one or the other.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I don't disagree with you; I also don't know.
First of all, the idea of voluntary compliance to a list of ethical guidelines hasn't served us all that well. That was some of the frustration that led to Bill C-2. There was a hue and cry to toughen up the ethical standards being exercised in Ottawa, so I think that was the temptation to go with legislation. But I also don't know if you really need to tell people that they shouldn't steal things, or that they should... I mean, when you hire somebody or elect somebody, it's kind of implied that they shouldn't do bad things. I don't know if a preamble stating that would help the interpretation.
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
My view is, if it's implied, it certainly won't hurt to state it, but you are right that no set of rules, no set of principles, will guarantee appropriate behaviour in the future. I don't think we've been served all that badly. I think most people who are public office holders, and most people who are members of the Senate or the House of Commons, have done perfectly well and continue to act in the appropriate way. I think we're incredibly well served. Perhaps the ethics regime has played some small part in that, but it certainly can't be called the cause of it.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
The word “honesty”, for instance. I notice there were some people who criticized that under the current Prime Minister's code it does say that people shall conduct themselves “with honesty”. There's no reference to that now, but surely it's implied. You'd have to be an idiot not to think that you're supposed to be honest, and you certainly can't use that as an excuse--I'll contravene this code because it didn't tell me not to anywhere. That shouldn't be necessary, I think.
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
Then we can relax about the whole thing.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'm not too exercised about it, but one of the frustrations was that some people have felt--I know this applies to Mr. Wilson maybe more than you--that it seemed the tone of those hearings at least started from the premise that the system wasn't broken and this is much ado about nothing. In fact I think he even said he preferred the ethical regime that he was administering when he was the Ethics Commissioner than what we're proposing in Bill C-2. I have to tell you that this is not shared by the general public. A lot of people are frustrated that Mr. Wilson never found anything wrong with anything that anybody ever did ever, but we knew there was bad stuff going on.
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
Without comment on the very last comment, I do believe the currently proposed act is an advance in many ways.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Shapiro, I'd like to turn to the report that you have referred to in your comments, the 2005-06 annual report of the Ethics Commissioner dated June 2006, and specifically to appendix I. I interpret what you're stating as to what it's going to take to operate your office for the year 2006 is $5,389,884. From 2005, although I see that's for 10.5 months...so ignoring that fact, it's roughly a 60% increase, and that's if Bill C-2 doesn't happen. For 34 employees, that's one heck of an increase. Obviously, it's not 60%, because 2005 is for less than a year, but that's one heck of an increase for 34 employees. Can you tell us why you need that increase?
Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
I'm going to ask Lyne Robinson-Dalpé, who's in charge of financial arrangements in the office, to respond to that question.
Lyne Robinson-Dalpé Director, Corporate Affairs, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
Basically, the 2006 figure that you see there is for the 2005-06 fiscal year, so that was last year. This year's budget has been adjusted for this year. Basically, the difference between the two years is because, as you will note, there's $1,200,000 just in salaries. In terms of the 2005 figure, I don't know if you remember, but there was a transitional period for the office at that point in time and we went down to about 12 to 15 employees; therefore, the salary budget was not as required as it was last year. For the last fiscal year we had 34 employees, and this is reflective of the 34 employees who were there. So the $1.2 million difference is in salaries, basically.
The other increase was in professional services, where we had to negotiate agreements with the House of Commons and the Library of Parliament for some of the services offered, and that's where some of the increases in financial requirements were identified.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Mr. Chairman, I raised that issue because I remember there was a certain amount of outsourcing, particularly of legal services for investigations. Is that where some of the increase is, with respect to the outsourcing of legal services?
Director, Corporate Affairs, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
Last year we spent about $112,000 in legal services. That was the amount for judicial advice provided by lawyers.
