Information & Ethics Committee on March 2nd, 2009

[Mary Dawson]

I have to come to a decision on the complaint made, so I would come to a conclusion. But I've found that each of the three, four, or five reports I've put out is different, and I handle each a little bit differently. For example, in one of them I actually suggested that if Parliament wanted to make a change maybe they'd like to consider it. But that only happened in one, because that was the only one where it was relevant. There are differences in each report, and there aren't any rules in the act or the code around what's to be in the report.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

I'll come back to the first question that Madame Thi Lac asked around folks who aren't covered by the new act who were covered under the previous code. You mentioned that there are some public officer-holders who aren't covered but have voluntarily agreed to comply. Is there a category of people who have been missed? Can you categorize the folks who aren't included now who were included before?

[Mary Dawson]

The definition of a public office-holder is not the clearest in the world, and some areas could be improved by some amendments. With the example you gave of the people who were asked to voluntarily comply, the wording of the act refers to people appointed by the Governor in Council. These people were not appointed by the Governor in Council; they were appointed by somebody else and approved by the Governor in Council, so technically they were not caught by the act.

My sense is that with an act, particularly when it's an onerous thing, you have to apply the strict wording and not go beyond that.

There weren't very many of those people, incidentally. There may have been between five and ten.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Do you think it requires a change to the legislation to be clearer and to catch all of those folks?

[Mary Dawson]

If the government wants to catch them, it would have to amend the legislation.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Do you have a suggested wording for a change or what that might look like?

[Mary Dawson]

I haven't been asked to give it, but I could do it.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay.

I noticed that there are also some other anomalies. For instance, you've talked about the summer student in the minister's office. Can you say a little bit about the kinds of problems that has raised?

[Mary Dawson]

I've made the observation that a summer student in a minister's office is under exactly the same rules as a minister or a deputy minister. Sometimes this creates some problems for that summer student. For example, if they're relying on a McDonald's job for the year, they have to give that up in order to be able to work in the minister's office. The other problem with short-term appointments is that sometimes they're gone before the end of the 120 days that they have to comply. Certainly if there were anything they had to divest, which in the case of students is probably fairly unlikely, there's a problem if their tenure is about 120 days, because it's silly to divest and then immediately get it back again.

I wouldn't exactly call them anomalies, but there are difficult situations in applying this act sometimes. There's a different range of categories of people covered by the act, and sometimes one size doesn't fit all perfectly.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Is there a way of fixing that in terms of the legislation? Is there a fix possible that you would see?

[Mary Dawson]

Sure.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Can you say something about what that might look like?

[Mary Dawson]

It would just be a matter of looking at the specific problems and writing an exception or adjusting it slightly.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

There's a similar situation with assets of $20,000 or less and the requirement to divest those, and I think you've made some interpretations there as well.

[Mary Dawson]

I had to determine what was sufficiently small to fall within the exception, and I've set that rule at $20,000. The reason I set it there was that you can't get a trustee to take a case that has less than a $20,000 value, basically, so it seemed a sensible limit.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

There was some press recently about the number of dinners that MPs and senators are invited to, and the fact that they're getting fancier. I know you don't deal with senators, but do you have any concerns about those kinds of events?

[Mary Dawson]

With respect to gifts, which invitations to dinners are, it entirely depends on who it's from and what it's for. If you're invited to an expensive dinner by your boyfriend, it's fine, but if you're invited to an expensive dinner by somebody who wants you to make a decision for them, then it may not be so fine. It depends entirely on the circumstances.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you, Mr. Siksay.

We have to move now to Mr. Hiebert, please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's good to see you again, Ms. Dawson. Thank you for being here.

What sections of the code do you spend most of your time focusing on adjudicating?

[Mary Dawson]

Do you mean the act or the MP code? Actually, it's gifts, whichever one you're asking about.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That's fine, and we've had a lengthy discussion about that.

Are there sections that are the subject of complaints by past or current public office-holders, and are there improvements that could be made that would address those complaints that would still preserve the basic principles behind the act?

[Mary Dawson]

Do you mean complaints about how the act applies?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Yes.

[Mary Dawson]

I think there probably are some. There probably could be some improvements in the act. The act is not bad, though, but there are small areas in the interpretation of the act that from time to time I come upon that are difficult cases. There's not much discretion in that act. That's the other change, perhaps, from the code. There was more discretion in the code. I'm not left with an awful lot of discretion, except in certain cases that are specified.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Right, so the complaints that you're hearing deal more with the grey areas, areas you would prefer to have some discretion over.