Evidence of meeting #27 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inquiry.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Mary Elizabeth Dawson  Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Denise Benoit  Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Simon Coakeley  Deputy Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

3:55 p.m.

Bloc

Richard Nadeau Bloc Gatineau, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Mr. Martin, please.

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Dawson.

I for one am very happy that the office is up and running. We looked forward to the idea of a truly independent ethics commissioner for years, and this is the realization of all the hard work that went into this.

I'm always a little critical when we spend so much time on the nuts and bolts estimates of what are really small budgets. For the Ethics Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, and the Access to Information Commissioner, we're talking about seven, eight, nine, ten or eleven million dollars. We spend as much time on this as we do on Heritage Canada's multi-billion-dollar estimates. It is rather absurd.

I'm not going to ask you any questions about paperclips or stationery or any of those costs here, but I am interested to know whether the volume of activity, in your experience to date, is showing an escalation trend that might make it necessary to revisit the size and scale of your operation stemming from the new act, the conflict of interest rules now being codified in an act of Parliament.

I suppose the question is whether you anticipate a volume of activity, in that now under the new act all current and former public officer holders could be the subject of an examination. I'd ask you to expand on how you see the current and former office holders, how far back you see that going, and whether you sense that it will cause a spike in activity.

April 10th, 2008 / 3:55 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

It hasn't to date. Mind you, I've only been in the job for nine months. Inquiries or examinations are part of the work of our office, but it's only a small part of that work. A large part of the work of our office is administering the annual reports and answering inquiries from the general public. We get an enormous number of inquiries generally, and most of them are misguided to our office, but we respond to them, giving advice to various members or public officer holders. We spend a lot of time on day-to-day advisory work.

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

What sort of advice is it for individual members? I've never found a need to phone the office of the Ethics Commissioner. What sorts of inquiries would you get from members?

3:55 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

It's things such as, “Should I accept this gift?”, or “Should I accept this invitation to speak here?”, or “Is it a problem that I'm a member of this board?”—things like that.

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

So there are still question marks about that, are there, in the minds of people?

3:55 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

Yes, and those are the things I'm hoping to get guidelines on, gradually. But as I say, I want them to be right; I don't want to have false starts with my guidelines.

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Is there a way to minimize inquiries from the general public that are misdirected? How are they finding you? Is there not some single window they could go to that would send them to the right place?

3:55 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

There doesn't seem to be. I'm, in a way, a single window for a number of people. But in fact we have different systems, so that if a question comes in that obviously shouldn't have been directed to our office, we will, within a couple of days.... There's a certain portion of my staff who will either say there's no way this should have come in, or if we can, we'll help them and say, maybe this should have gone to the Privacy Commissioner, or maybe it should have gone somewhere else. That's a portion of our work, and it only occupies one or two people.

But for the slightly more complex questions that come in, we try to provide answers.

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

You're helping put in place the guidelines on gifts. What about larger questions such as inducements? Is that in the category of something the Ethics Commissioner would get into?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

An inducement might well be a gift. If somebody gives you $100 to do something, it's an inducement, but it's also a gift.

By using the word “inducement”, you're suggesting there's something wrong with it, that there probably is a conflict situation, but....

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Yes. I guess what I'm getting at is that we've always been frustrated with previous ethics commissioners. They never found anything wrong with anything that anybody ever did. It wouldn't matter how many complaints you'd bury them with, there was never anything wrong with anything that any public office holder ever did. Those would be the findings. Maybe that was because of the structure of their office—that they weren't independent. But I'm hoping you'll be able to find the difference between right and wrong. If the public office holder doesn't know it, maybe they could come to you and ask and you'll be able to tell them, because that's been an endless irritation.

I've filed a lot of complaints with ethics commissioners about floor crossers who are offered inducements to cross the floor. I guess that's what I'm getting at with inducements. We need some help in defining the right and wrong associated with.... To offer a member of Parliament some kind of inducement to do something, to do anything, surely violates some code of conduct or the MPs' code. Would that be what those would fall under?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

Yes, it would be the MPs' code for that.

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

And we'd still come to you with those grievances and complaints?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

Yes, although—

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Has anybody filed a complaint on the Cadman affair?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

No.

There are very few things I can talk about when it comes to my—

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Oh, I understand. I wouldn't press. I'm just curious.

Could you give an idea of the volume of active files you might have going currently involving MPs and people around Parliament? Is it 5, or is it 50, or is it 500?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

It depends on what kinds of active files you're talking about. All our MPs have an active file in a sense, so we have three hundred and whatever it is.

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

I mean complaints, I guess.

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

We don't get a huge number of complaints.

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

I would like to think so.

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Mary Elizabeth Dawson

It's a double-edged sword. You don't want to have a situation where everybody's doing bad things that need to come in complaints to you.

4 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

No, absolutely.