Thank you. I'm going to be a little bit more general in my comments.
We're talking today about the Conflict of Interest Act applying to ministers, parliamentary secretaries, ministerial staff, ministerial advisers, deputy ministers, and other Governor in Council appointees. There is, as you know, also a code for members that would also apply to ministers simultaneously, but we're dealing just with the Conflict of Interest Act today.
In a general sense I would say that most of my work on this has been in a comparative context. I can say that in terms of conflict of interest legislation and codes that apply in countries that we normally compare ourselves to, the code that we have sort of looks like everybody else's in the sense that we have rules against similar things, and we have rules encouraging similar things. Our legislation has a lengthy section on what happens when you make the transition from public life to private life. There are different rules about cooling-off periods and what you're not allowed to do and whom you're not allowed to work for. It looks in a general sense like what the U.S. does, what Australia does, what the U.K. does, what we do in the provinces.
What you see in terms of differences between the legislation is there might be differences in punishments for failure to comply. There might be different reporting requirements. There might be different lengths of time in terms of cooling-off periods. But essentially the thrust of it is relatively similar. We deal with switching sides. We deal with the inappropriate use of information. We communicate that it's wrong to use the information you got in your public office once you come out to the private sector. All of those major things are there.
I wouldn't say that if we compare ours to other similar pieces of legislation, there's any glaring omission. There's not some huge area I can see that other jurisdictions deal with that we don't. In the other direction, I would say there's nothing really we're doing that we're the innovators for, that others aren't doing right. Our legislation seems to be relatively consistent with a group of countries that we normally compare ourselves to.
But there are differences in terms of the pieces of legislation in the area, if you look at them. It seems to me that regardless of how the code is worded and exactly how it's structured and that sort of thing, generally these things have similar objectives. Sometimes you see a legislature move to create this kind of code because they want to be consistent with other legislatures, because they want to make sure they're covering this off. Oftentimes these things come about when there's a specific trigger event or problem, that sort of immediate thing you want to show you're responding to.
But whatever it is, generally a code of ethics comes forward as a piece of communication. It's a tool to communicate. It's a tool to communicate standards to the people who are under the code. In this case it's something to communicate ethical standards and expectations to public office holders. It's also a tool to communicate to the public.
What people hope when we create these codes is that the people who are working under the code, the people who have to abide by the code, get a sense of what they're supposed to do. That's first and foremost. When we have this piece of legislation come into place, I'm guessing that the people who come under the piece of legislation want to be able to look to it and figure out what they're supposed to do, because what you don't want to do is find out you're on the wrong side of it. What you want it to do is create a common set of assumptions and understandings about what's acceptable and what's not. You want to have a clear idea of how you're supposed to be compliant with this thing, because most people are going to look at it and just not want to have any problems come from it. They want the instructions to be clear so they can do what they have to do, disclose what they have to disclose, and move on with their lives.
If you don't have a code like this, the information that we have from other jurisdictions seems to suggest that MPs and public office holders will have very different assumptions about what's ethical and what's not. If you can imagine not having a code at all and you went around to every MP and asked what they thought was an acceptable value of a gift to accept, or what they thought was acceptable in terms of disclosing assets, liabilities, that kind of thing, they would have very different ideas about those things. That means if you don't have a code, everybody is doing something different. If you have a code and everybody understands it and it's enforced reasonably well, then it means everybody is working under the same set of assumptions. Everyone is toeing the same line in terms of what we expect.
If everybody understands what's expected of them and everyone can sort of agree that it's reasonable, then probably over a period of time you will get a culture of acceptance of what the code is about. You're more likely to get compliance that way, because people get it. They think it's reasonable. People see that's what everybody else is doing, so they want to do the same thing so they're not the exception to the rule. It's much easier to get voluntary compliance if it comes across as reasonable and if everybody understands it. That doesn't necessarily mean the penalties have to be terrible. You should understand what's expected of you. That's the communication to public office holders, MPs, etc.
As for communication to the public, normally when these things are passed, whether as legislation or as part of the Standing Orders or whatever, legislators want members of the public to think that things are being run ethically. In the Canadian context, we don't want people at home to think that everything that happens on Parliament Hill is corrupt, and every time an MP meets with a lobbyist there's something miserable going on. We use these things to tell the voters that we're mindful of ethical standards all the time, and that there's a right way and a wrong way to do things, and that we're doing things the right way.
Finally, usually these codes have some sort of mechanism of compliance and penalty if you do something wrong, which is another way of communicating to the public that we take ethics seriously and that people who violate these rules will be punished.
Sometimes there can be a problem in the sense that the objectives of the code can come to be at odds with one another. In trying to encourage ethical behaviour, in trying to encourage compliance, in the process of trying to expose any kind of wrongdoing that's happening and punishing someone, all of which are totally defensible goals, sometimes the transparency can encourage the public to think there is actually a lot of wrongdoing when in fact there is not. If the media really have a lot to focus on and there are a number of investigations, and a number of times somebody is penalized $500 because they didn't disclose on time, then there's lots of fodder to start saying that all these things are going wrong and ethics is really a problem, when that might not be the case. It might not be that behaviour has really changed much at all; it's just that this is how the code works and it's exposing things.
In order to avoid that kind of a problem, I would say that we want to have the right balance between rules and principles. Generally the codes will fall on a kind of rules versus principles continuum in the sense that some codes—and you'll see these in the corporate world too—are very principle oriented. The language is very aspirational. The code talks about what we want and what you should do: MPs should uphold the highest ethical standards; it's all about what you should do and how you should look and what it means to be ethical. That's generally what the principles look like.
The rules tend to focus on what it means to be doing something wrong: the code prohibits this; you'll be penalized $500 if you do this. The language tends to be sort of negative, because that's the way rules and laws are. You focus on the things you're not supposed to do, and then you outline the penalties for doing them.
I think you want to get the right balance between those two things so that the principles are there, but then at the same time the rules are there to give some sort of clarity to the principles so that MPs and other people under the code know what they're supposed to do.
I read Commissioner Dawson's report as well. I can see that she has made a number of recommendations, many of which are very specific on the basis of her years of experience with the code and problems that she has run into. It seems to me that in some cases there are discrepancies between her mandate and the objectives of the code on one hand and her ability to get information and see what's really going on on the other hand. I think she is trying to close those gaps in some cases. She spends a lot of time talking about the idea of gifts and advantages and how MPs and ministers are supposed to deal with those.
In terms of closing loopholes, in terms of lowering the threshold for disclosure of a gift to $30 instead of $200, you can do a lot of that. Every time you review this code, every five years, you can probably come up with another huge list of things that you can penalize, or that you can address, or that you can create a mechanism to do something about.
You can do that over and over and over again, but it's not going to stop. Every time you review, there is going to be another area of behaviour that will come to your attention that you can make rules about. You can't do it exhaustively. If you focus too much on the rules and not so much on the principles, it doesn't encourage MPs and other people to use the kind of common sense approach which would probably eliminate a lot of these problems.
I would hope to see that whatever goes forward would be a balance between rules and principles, so you don't go too far off in one direction.