Thank you.
Thank you all for inviting me to engage in your process today.
Reviews of conflict of interest statutes are breaking out all over across this country. We have one under way in British Columbia, there's another one under way in Alberta, and here we are in the nation's capital. It's interesting to look at our experience comparatively, and also, to some extent, internationally by comparison.
If we go way back in time, we ask the question, why? Why do we need this kind of legislation, and why do we need these kinds of people operating that legislation?
I saw the other day a quotation from James Madison, who was one of those who prepared the American Constitution, and 200 years ago he had this to say:
It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [i.e. conflict of interest legislation] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Those words, beautifully articulated by him, lead to the auxiliary team that you have sitting here, in part, today.
Both Commissioner Morrison and I have had the opportunity to read the transcripts from the various learned folk who have come in front of you and to listen to and watch your questioning of them, so both of us have agreed that given that you're at the end of the process—or perhaps, as some people would say, you're not closer to the end, you're just further from the beginning—we thought it would be more helpful if we spent less time, in a didactic way, telling you about ourselves.
That said, I do want to go on to say, however, that for James Madison and the Americans, the experience, in terms of the administration of conflict of interest, has been quite different than has ours here in Canada. The Americans went the route of establishing conflict of interest commissions early, which typically consist of somewhere between 6 and 12 people in each of the various states. Those commissions have a reputation of being partisan and bruising. They are commissions that are in part used for political purposes, God forbid.
An indication, I guess, of how the public reacts to the commissions in some cases comes from the quotation of a citizen who was confronted and affected by one of the commission's findings. He said, with respect to the chair of the commission, who was not a political friend of his, that the chair had a smile that closely resembled the glint of the winter sun on the brass handles of a coffin. On the other hand, the same member said, in respect of one of his own political colleagues, that he can trust him completely, and that he was prepared, if asked, to play poker with him over the phone. You can see that the process in the commission way in the United States has been highly politicized.
Our uniquely Canadian experience, which now involves all of our various jurisdictions, sees us governed in these respects by commissioners in all of the provinces, territories, and here in Canada. The success, it seems to me, that some of us have enjoyed, and the legislation that has come into effect and been amended to reflect that success, and further changes that need to be made, are in large part because we have chosen this unique model, which many of your witnesses have said, from their point of view, makes all the difference in terms of bringing along not only the public in its appreciation of what it is that we're doing, but the players—the people around this table who hope the commissioners will have both feet on the ground, will have some general understanding of the political process, will understand that we're all human, and finally, will understand that we're here to make sure that nobody, to use the agrarian term from out west, steps in anything soft.
That's important, it seems to me, in terms of how you view us and how you view our work, because what we do is done, if it's successful, on the basis of a trust that has been forged, and forged on the basis of, typically, meeting with members, taking their disclosures, and agreeing with them, as Judge Frankfurter said so many years ago, that sunlight in the disclosure process is the best disinfectant. In other words, we have all invested our efforts at various levels in making sure the process works.
I want to give you a little bit of context about the British Columbia situation, and that is that our legislation was passed a couple of years after that of Ontario and is modelled in large part after it. There are, however, some differences in respect of the Ontario legislation and the legislation that's contained in your federal act and code.
We have, in British Columbia, simply an act. We don't have both an act and a code, but it must be said at once that in the act is embedded all of the guarantees and the prohibitions that you will find in your code. But we have one document to have to refer to, unlike both Ontario and Canada.
Our commissioner does not have the power to initiate an investigation. Our work in British Columbia results from a purely complaint-driven process. It has, however, one very large distinction with respect to Ontario and Canada, and that is that British Columbia, along with Alberta and New Brunswick, is one of the few jurisdictions to give to the public access to our process. So the public has standing and can file complaints and request opinions in British Columbia. No doubt we'll get into that more in our discussion, Mr. Chair, which will follow.
There is in British Columbia another difference; there is no requirement for ministers to divest, though many do. We do have a blind trust and a screening kind of arrangement that's available. Our act deals with all members of the legislature, all 85 of them. There are some special provisions with respect to those who are in the cabinet, but the act itself and the reporting requirements apply to everybody.
We do not in British Columbia ask you to disclose the value of your assets or the size of your obligations. The public policy reason for that is that we don't care what your net worth is, or, perhaps put more properly, we don't think it's appropriate that you be put in a situation of having to display to the world your net worth. It's enough, as far as we're concerned, for us to know how you are invested, not how much you are invested and how much you owe.
We have a provision with respect to apparent conflict of interest, a subject that has taken up a lot of your time to this moment. We also have no ability to monitor and indeed we have no jurisdiction over what happens to any member after they've left office and are in a post-employment situation. We can't monitor or track what they do. We have no power to discipline.
Insofar as punishment is concerned, the commissioner, after making his determination, can make recommendations to the legislature of British Columbia for penalty. The commissioner cannot impose a fine or impose any other penalty himself. Only the legislature can do that, and the legislature can choose to ignore what the commissioner's recommendations are. If, however, the commissioner's recommendations are accepted, then there is the imposition of sanctions. The legislature cannot impose any punishment that has not been recommended by the commissioner, so it must choose an either/or kind of situation.
Mr. Chair, in broad terms, those are some of the differences between the legislation that Commissioner Morrison administers and the legislation that I administer, and I'll reserve anything else I have to say for your questions.
Thank you again for having me.
