Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Wild, for being here today.
At the outset, I want to say I think it's great that we're doing this five-year review. I think it's great that we brought forward the Federal Accountability Act, and, as part of that, the Conflict of Interest Act, and that we did try to set some rules. We brought a comprehensive package forward and we've done our best. The whole idea of this review is to get feedback from you and others on the following. Is it relevant again five years later? Is it covering the right people? Are the right disclosures being done? Is the commissioner's mandate appropriate?
In that vein, I asked the commissioner on Monday a couple of questions, because I'm struggling with a part of the act. Obviously, we're covering certain public office holders, including cabinet ministers, but essentially we're saying to somebody that once you're appointed to cabinet, you're not really a member of Parliament anymore. You're not really there. You can't really advocate for your community on a local issue. And I'm struggling with that.
I'm sure every MP, if they're on the government side, wishes they're going to get that call from the Prime Minister and they're going to get appointed as a cabinet minister or a parliamentary secretary, and they want to take on that role and they want to do that job to the best of their ability. But it sounds like the way this act is written we've almost handcuffed those same people, preventing them from being able to advocate for their community on an individual issue, which may have absolutely no relation to the ministry of which they're a minister.
Is that a shortcoming in the act? Or was it particularly deliberate that we really do have two very clear sets of individuals who work in the House of Commons, those who are in cabinet or parliamentary secretaries and those of us who are regular MPs?