Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I was on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and it's been to my great disappointment that I haven't had the opportunity to hear from you more often since they've removed me from there.

I'll try to follow up on Mr. Easter. His confusion has led to some confusion for me.

Let's just say, for example, that you're a prime minister, you own a shipping company, and that shipping company is registered in another country and carries natural resources. Does the prime minister then recuse himself from international relations, like the Commonwealth or the Francophonie or whatever, from the country that his ships are registered in? When the ship is carrying natural resources, does he then recuse himself from a natural resource discussion? If somebody gets sick on the ship, does he recuse himself from health care? If there's an immigration matter when the ship crosses into Canadian waters, does he then recuse himself from immigration matters? If there's somebody who breaks the law, does he have to recuse himself from public safety? We could go pretty much on and on, far more than 10 departments.

Following up on Mr. Easter's confusion on how that worked, I wonder how, in the past, it would work for the number one politician in the country? Up until a year ago we didn't do the public screening, as you're saying. How is it possible that this country can ever be governed by anybody if we're following such strict rules that would basically make it impossible for anybody to do their job, because, following the confusion across, we just wouldn't trust anybody to do their job for the benefit of the country?

[Mary Dawson]

Not everybody has wide interests, to begin with, so there are lots of people who can do their job. But that's what we're trying to solve. When we're dealing with screens, we're trying to set up systems whereby these conflicts will not arise.

If you have an interest in a specific entity, it doesn't mean that you can never have an interest in anything that's at all remotely related to it.

I don't really quite know how to answer your question.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Basically what we're then saying is that we can accept that there are talented individuals out there who can actually, with some guidance from your office and in the best interests of the country, separate their responsibilities and their duties to the country from what they were doing in a previous life. Clearly, we've had a prime minister and public officer holders in the past who have done that quite successfully and have never, before they even took office, had to endure a public display such as perhaps we're seeing right now.

[Mary Dawson]

Yes. The rules have changed in the last 10 years. That's one observation to make. They've become more direct. The other thing is that the more holdings and the more involvement one has before one comes into the job, the more complex it's going to be to establish the screens or to establish the procedures around them, but nothing is impossible. That's what there is and you take your chances. Maybe there are a number of things that an individual won't be able to be involved in. That's a choice that has to be made as to whether that individual is still wanted.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

In the instances where members of Parliament make complaints about other members of Parliament--and you see these instances of massive amounts of complaints that are just done for the sake of, I would suggest, and you probably wouldn't agree with me, partisan political advantage, where a complaint is duplicated 20, 30, 40, 50 times and is not completed properly...how do we stop that type of misuse of your office before it happens?

Ultimately, then, you have individuals who truly don't care about the reputation of the institutions or your office or other members of Parliament. What they want to do, I would suggest, and you can disagree with me, is score some cheap political points, and they don't care what the end result is because for a brief time they can say somebody was under investigation, when the actual submission is of zero benefit and provides nothing. There are a lot of doorknobs out there who will do things like this.

I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to how we can stop that type of misuse of your office in the future. Is there a potential for us--when a member complains about another member, not only does it get sealed until it's resolved, but nobody goes to the media; the person who has made the complaint and the person whom the complaint is made against know it. You do your investigation, and then when it's concluded it's made public. So we can stop this type of misuse of your office in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Sorry, I didn't mean to go that long.

[Mary Dawson]

There's a distinction between the substance of a complaint and the way it's brought to our office. It's pretty obvious which complaint you're talking about. I observed it wasn't brought to our office in the best way, but the fact of the matter was there was some substance to that complaint. We didn't find ultimately that the act had been contravened, but I certainly made some strong statements about the behaviour that was complained about.

I think they're two separate questions, and I hope the office will be respected, and I'm sure the office was respected even in that case. It was just an odd way of going about things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Calandra.

Ms. Bennett, five minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

I was in cabinet with both Belinda Stronach and Paul Martin, and it seemed they had to leave the room for certain subjects. It seemed to be pretty straightforward, and it was under a recusal.

I guess I too am having trouble with what a screen would be for an adviser to the Prime Minister, in that it's not as obvious that this person has left the meeting and that this had been reported. In the interest of making conflict of interest screens public, I guess I'm still having trouble struggling about all the meetings in the PMO that would include the adviser to the Prime Minister in many areas. As my colleague pointed out, how will you know if the screens being applied...?

I don't think we're being facetious to say, with this breadth of interest in this new chief of staff, will there be somebody needed in the office to be able to tell the individual he can be in this meeting and not in this one? It does seem pretty difficult to administer when the interests of Onex are that broad.

[Mary Dawson]

First, just to correct something at the front end, those were not recusals of the previous people you referred to. They were conflict of interest screens. There's just a very--

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Oh, I see. So if they were sitting in the meeting until the decision was taken, and then they would recuse themselves from the--

[Mary Dawson]

No. As I tried to explain before, the definition of recusal, under the old regime that they were under, included conflict of interest. It was just kind of a definition thing, but the technique that was used was conflict of interest, not recusal. Recusal is a last-minute absenting yourself from the room. I wanted to correct that because there's just a persistent misunderstanding of the difference between those two. People think that conflict of interest screens are something new. That's been the process for years.

Now, on to your question. I think one can only assume that these individuals have a certain level of integrity and that they want to comply with the legislation. We don't start off with the assumption that they're trying to avoid complying with the legislation. And do you know what? The only thing I can say is that in any case, where somebody's not complying with the act, one hopes that the truth will out, that sooner or later one will find out it's not being complied with. You can't do too much in secret anymore these days. One has to rely, to some extent, on the integrity of the individuals, but making it very clear as to what their obligations are. And yes, these conflict screens do require the imposition of another individual to intercede and stop stuff from getting to the person who has the screen.

I don't know that I can say much else. The more things you have to watch out for, the more complex it becomes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I guess one of the issues is around training and the training of staff, the training of members of Parliament, the training of new staff in a minister's office, in a prime minister's office. Do you feel there's enough training to help make these kinds of decisions? Reading a booklet sometimes isn't quite the same scenario. Do you think you should have the ability to do training?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, we speak to a variety of different groups quite frequently, but the bottom line that we give people all the time is, when you're not sure, call our office and discuss it with us. We get an awful lot of calls for advice; our biggest job is the advice we give. We get a number of calls each day looking for advice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bennett.

We're now going to move to Mr. Albrecht. No questions?

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay. We're going to move now to Madame Thi Lac.

Madame Thi Lac.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I have just one question for Ms. Dawson.

A bit earlier, you talked about your role in terms of training. You concluded by saying that a number of people had contacted you for information on the services you provide.

At the moment, you do not have to give a reason when you decide not to investigate a case. Would it not be possible to balance being transparent with protecting an individual's privacy by making certain information public without compromising privacy? You could turn these kinds of situations into test cases. I believe that the people calling to ask questions are acting in good faith. I think it would be possible to prevent certain problem cases. People may not necessarily know they are in violation of the code. Having examples of cases could be helpful.

[Mary Dawson]

I think there are several issues here mixed up in what you're asking.

When I was talking about people phoning for advice, it doesn't relate to the investigations; it relates to their requirements under the act. That's the first thing.

I agree with you that perhaps there could be a bit more care or a few more provisions around what people can do when they make complaints, and allowing for some way to answer. The best way of putting protection there is to make it a contravention to disclose that they've taken a complaint, at least until I and the person complained against know.

There are several tentacles to your question. I think I've probably missed one of them, if you'd like to....

As far as doing sample examples, that's a very good way of training, and it's something we should do more of probably. We are trying to put different notices up on our website. We give training sessions to different boards, to ministers' offices. A large number of the reporting public office holders are found in ministers' offices. For example, all the ministerial staff.... Whenever there's a good group, we're more than happy to go there. We try to encourage people to let us come and give presentations and examples. Each year we try to do a presentation to each of the party caucuses. There's a number of fora that we use, and we're going to try to increase our use of the website for information.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Do you feel that you have all the financial and human resources you need to respond to all the requests you receive and to take a more proactive approach to future challenges?

[Mary Dawson]

We probably have sufficient resources, and, yes, I agree we could probably be even more proactive than we are. I don't think adding new resources is going to change the amount of productivity we have. I think it's important not to let an organization get too big and unwieldy, because there's a value in consistency and communication. We're not a bad size.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Dawson, I'd like to get a reaction from you, I suppose. As you are no doubt aware, Democracy Watch has issued a very lengthy dissertation or press release, whatever you want to call it. It's very negative and damning about your office, and not only the office but the overarching legislation and the way it's administered, that really it's not effective or efficient. You probably don't have a lot of mechanisms at your disposal to respond to these allegations. Do you have any comment to make about that? It is fairly lengthy and it was all very negative, as you know.

[Mary Dawson]

Yes. It was so lengthy I really didn't have time to read it all. I've lots of things to do.

Obviously, I don't agree with much of it, but on the other hand, there's always a kernel of issues hidden among the issues that are raised. You know, I have other things to occupy my mind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, then, but if you want to respond, please feel free to write to the committee.

Mr. Albrecht.