First, I would just like to endorse Mr. Jordan's comments from Tuesday that as a lobbyist, having your name placed in front of Parliament as someone who has violated the rules has a financial consequence. It affects your career prospects.
Coming back to the specific question of administrative monetary penalties, anytime you have an officer of Parliament or a tribunal of any sort with essentially unfettered quasi-judicial powers, especially powers with a Criminal Code underpinning, you want to make sure that there's a clear commitment to due process. Before we could endorse that recommendation, we'd need to see a greater commitment to due process on the part of the OCL.
As mentioned, we've seen rules applied retroactively, such as having 2009 rules applied to events that took place in 2004. We've seen lobbyists found guilty of putting a cabinet minister in a conflict of interest after the Ethics Commissioner has said that the minister was never in a conflict of interest. We've seen straightforward investigations last up to ten years. We've seen seven-year investigations without the subjects being aware that they've been accused of anything; they just get a letter one day that says congratulations, you're no longer under investigation. We've had lobbyists denied the right to have counsel make oral representations on their behalf during investigations, and we've had the Canadian Bar Association find that certain rulings and actions by the OCL have been unconstitutional. There's a legal opinion on the record to that effect.
The commissioner is asking, in effect, to be the registrar, the regulator, the investigator, the judge, and the jury. So before we could support that recommendation, we'd want to see a clear requirement within the legislation that before penalties were applied, there would be an investigation that adhered to the most basic and fundamental concepts of judicial due process.
