Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will just point out as well that I'm not a regular member of this committee.
Madam Dawson, thank you for being here today.
I want to focus for a few minutes on the divestment of controlled assets that you point out on page 14. In the first sentence you say that since taking office you've been concerned about the apparent over-breadth of the provisions in the act. You go on in the last part of that paragraph to indicate that this prohibition applies to all controlled assets held by a reporting public office-holder, whether personally, in a joint account with a family member, as a trustee for a beneficiary, or executor, and so on. Certainly, I have some concerns along with you there.
But then on page 16, in the second paragraph, you indicated that as of March 31, 2009, there were roughly 1,100 reporting public office-holders, and 119 had divested themselves of controlled assets through sales at arm’s length. Then in the very last sentence of that paragraph, you said that of the 95, only five involved assets that would have posed a risk of conflict of interest.
The next paragraph goes on to speak about another category, in which only four would have posed a potential conflict of interest.
So in total, that's only nine in all of these.
Then at the very end of that section of your report, page 18, in the last paragraph you indicate that you believe some consideration could be given to providing the commissioner with some discretion in setting compliance measures in appropriate cases. Obviously, based on your statistics here, I can't at first blush disagree with you. But would this not add an undue burden on your staff in terms of making these individual decisions on every individual case? Would it actually add to the subjectivity of the decisions that are being made, as opposed to having it clearly identified within the act?