Evidence of meeting #14 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was budget.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Yes, I think you probably will.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Would one of those areas perhaps be sponsored travel of family members, etc.? Family members and relatives are referenced in other parts of the act, but it seems that's not an area that we pay heed to right now.
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's one that I have not, to date, spent a lot of time on, because there are so many other important areas that I deal with. But I'll take your suggestion. Certainly the work you requested actually has just shown the breadth of the different approaches in sponsored travel. Yes, we'll do some thinking on that, although with the MP code, unlike the act, it is the MPs who have created that code for themselves. But I can make observations.
The first year I had more to say on the act than the code. But we'll see. I will definitely think about these things.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
With regard to the broad statement that it is the MPs, there is a standing order that requires a debate in the House on the Standing Orders—and the MP code is included in the Standing Orders as an appendix—to happen within the first 60 sitting days of the first session of a Parliament. It didn't happen in the last 39th Parliament; it was negotiated away for other reasons. It didn't happen in this Parliament because we didn't hit 60 sitting days in the current Parliament; we prorogued and had a second session. The MPs didn't get a chance to have any input into amendments to the Standing Orders or to the MP code. Maybe that should be one of your recommendations. If the MP code is going to be important, it should get scrutiny in every Parliament, regardless of the timing. It really is important.
I thought I'd raise that. It is a problem.
Madame Thi Lac, s'il vous plaît.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Ms. Dawson. I have a few questions for you. First off, you spoke about funds that accumulated over the last fiscal year.
How will those funds be allocated over the next fiscal year? If you were to provide a breakdown of the funds that were...
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I will ask my assistant to answer that question.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
As indicated earlier, salaries represent the largest item of our $7.1 million budget. In fact, the full salary budget amounts to $4.5 million. That leaves us with a non-salary budget of $1.8 million, an important portion of which is spent covering the cost of administrative services received under the various MOUs. When you add up the amounts under all the MOUs, the total comes out to between $700,000 and $800,000. Therefore, the amount that is left over and does not cover salaries is used to pay for normal operating expenses, for example, for equipment, systems and trips, although members of our organization travel very little.
In sum, no money is carried forward to the next fiscal year.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You indicated that information from public office holders and MPs had been updated as a consequence of the last election.
How often must MPs and public office holders update the information they have sent you in between election campaigns?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We have a requirement for an annual review of the declarations that public office holders have made, and the MPs as well, so once a year we send a letter to MPs. In that letter, we remind them of their obligations and ask them to update their information. That's one area where we've made an enormous improvement over this past year, because when I came into the office I found that some of those annual reviews had lagged for two or three years, and we're now completely up to date. I'm quite proud of that, as a matter of fact.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You said that there were no deadlines for you to submit your reports. However, do you have any data on the duration of the investigations you have conducted during your mandate?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Each of the investigations takes a different length of time. There's no standard amount of time. We did an average of the four that we did, and we found that the average was about five and a half months, I believe.
As for the cost, we support our investigations almost entirely internally. We don't resort to outside lawyers, so it's quite a bit less expensive than if we were getting outside lawyers. The model we've developed for an average, because we knew we'd be asked this question, said that it was about $24,000 for the average investigation, I think, but there are enormous differences between each investigation.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You also said that you could pursue, on your own initiative, requests from members of the general public to undertake investigations. However, you have an obligation to act on all requests from members of Parliament.
Do you have any statistics on the number of requests from the general public that led to an investigation and those that did not?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I do not recall the exact number, but there have been very few.
I think we had between six and eight direct requests from the public to carry out investigations.
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
How many requests led to an investigation and how many did not?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We have recently initiated such an investigation.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Out of the six to eight requests that were made, a single one led to an investigation.
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We considered six or eight requests, but we decided that in only one instance was it worthwhile to initiate an investigation.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You also said that the requests made by elected representatives must be studied. Is the plaintiff informed of the conclusions of an investigation into the complaint, or is only the party informed?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
The plaintiff is always kept informed as well.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You said that between six and eight requests made by someone from outside the public service were considered. How many requests have you received in total?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's difficult to say because only between six and eight of the requests required an investigation. However, some of the complaints we receive from the public were not specific at all. So we estimated that only between six and eight requests were legitimate.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
In your presentation, you said that you received several requests from the public and that you had to check back in many of those cases to see if the allegations were founded, but that most of them did not contain enough supporting evidence.
Is there any way you can inform the public on how to present a request with supporting evidence, or do you reject them arbitrarily? Do you contact the person whose request might be rejected to ask them for additional information, or is the request simply rejected?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We have to keep information that's given to us confidential. We don't want to destroy anybody's reputation, so we're very careful not to suggest there's a problem if we don't have sufficient evidence. As soon as we begin an investigation, under the act and the code we are not permitted to disclose anything about it except the fact that there is an investigation. We're very careful not to put out personal information unless we've actually had an investigation and found a conclusion.
I don't know if that answers your question completely.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
What I'm asking specifically is, when a member of the public asks you to investigate, but you find that person's request does not provide sufficient evidence, do you contact the person and ask for additional information? As you know, sometimes it's difficult to include all the information on a form.