I apologize, but my French would have to be better; and so I am going to reply to you in English.
One thing the Ethics Commissioner has recommended, and I'll say generally that we agree with all of the Ethics Commissioner's recommendations and you'll see the ones that the coalition takes exception to in the brief. Essentially, it's worded very clearly saying to not do what the Ethics Commissioner has recommended. There are only a few of them. One is in the disclosure of assets. The Ethics Commissioner is saying to weaken that for some types of public office holders, and in fact, disclosure of assets should be increased.
There are a couple of assets that are actually exempt now. They do not have to be divested from. They are investment vehicles, like mutual funds, where you are investing in companies. You don't have to divest from those even though you would know that you own shares in companies.
She's saying not to increase the divestment standards and actually reduce the divestment standards for certain public office holders covered by the act. It should go the other way. The disclosure of assets should be reduced from $10,000 to $1,000 and the divestment requirements should actually be increased.
The other big one is where she is saying to make the conflict of interest screens that she currently uses legal. They are currently illegal. My position is that the Ethics Commissioner is violating the act by using conflict of interest screens. What she is doing with public office holders is saying, “Tell me the area in which you're in a conflict, and then we'll set up a screen and you will not have to disclose your recusals for every decision-making process that you recuse yourself from.” She's saying the screen means that you don't have to disclose recusals, but the act says that recusals have to be disclosed. The screen is not anywhere in the act. It's not legal. I think it's an illegal scheme that's hiding recusals.
There are two loopholes that she doesn't address, the big ones. She's not saying to eliminate the general application loophole. I could call it the Nigel Wright loophole, but it applies to everybody.
If you read Nigel Wright's conflict of interest screen, for example, it says that he will recuse himself from all matters, but he's not going to notify the public when, to do with his financial holdings, except matters of general application. About 99% of what he deals with and what every cabinet minister, MP and senator deals with, are matters of general application. For example, there isn't a Royal Bank act; there's a Bank Act, and it's a matter of general application. This loophole which the Ethics Commissioner does not address means that the act doesn't apply to 99% of what all of you do, which makes it pretty useless. It's almost impossible to be in a conflict of interest. The finance minister can own $1 million in shares in every bank and still make the changes to the Bank Act because you cannot be in a conflict of interest when you're dealing with a matter of general application. If that loophole is not eliminated, it doesn't really matter what else you do in terms of the conflict of interest rules.
The gift rules and things like that are separate. The conflict of interest rules do not apply to 99% of what you do.