There are a couple of things around that question. There's a bit of grey in the answer in the sense that the act does attempt to balance the idea that you have ministers who are also members of Parliament. Quite frankly, their constituents have a right to receive the same services from their member of Parliament as from other members of Parliament. So, how do you balance that then with the role a minister may have and the issues that can create?
Subsection 64(1) of the act is a very important subsection. It was the subject of a lot of discussion when the act went through the House and Senate the first time around. It's an important section because that is the section that lays out that nothing in the act prohibits a member of the Senate or House of Commons, who is also a public office holder, from engaging in those activities that he or she would normally carry out as a member of the Senate or House of Commons.
That was a deliberate choice to put that provision in at the time. It was put there because the idea was that ministers and parliamentary secretaries would have to play a role as MPs and senators in conducting activities on behalf of their constituents. The recent decisions of the commissioner have suggested that there are certain areas where that work has to be curtailed.
I would say there is nothing necessarily new in that debate. This whole issue of the role of ministers vis-à-vis certain types of bodies, in particular bodies that carry out any kind of an adjudicative function, has been an area of discussion and controversy going back to the early nineties and probably even before.
I think the difficulty is whether or not additional clarity may be needed to try to figure out where the lines of the go and no-go zones need to be drawn. The commissioner offered her views when she appeared and the committee is going to have to look closely at that and think about that.
I can say that the primary concern in the development of the act, if you look from 1990 forward and you look at how accountable government has changed—because it has a whole chapter that deals with the role of ministers vis-à -vis administrative tribunals in crown corporations—and if you look at all of the issues that have gone on in that last 20-25 years, the line that's being drawn is really saying that you have to be particularly careful if you are a minister responsible for the actual organization.
If the organization is in your portfolio, you need to be particularly careful about having any interaction with that organization in order to further the interest of a constituent. But you still have to be able to do the things that an MP would otherwise be able to do. There should be processes put in place so that your constituents can have the normal referrals that other MPs may be able to offer them.
The uncertainty at the moment is where all of that sits, given the recent decisions of the commissioner and whether or not these are policy areas that the committee wants to weigh in on. I think we will wait to see what the committee has to say about them.
From my perspective, from a public policy perspective, we need to look at that to make sure that the balance is all correct. Right now, I think there is a bit of tension between the orders the commissioner has issued and how accountable government is framed, and we're going to have to look at that.