Madam Chair, I would like to bring forward a motion that's been passed to my committee colleagues:
That pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h), the committee undertake a study on the report of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner entitled: The Finley Report March 10th 2015; that the committee include in its study the Prime Minister’s guidance document to Ministers, Ministers of state, and Parliamentary secretaries; that the committee include in its study broadening section 7 of the conflict of interest act; that the committee invite as part of the study the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner of Canada, MP Peter Kent, MP John Baird, Minister Finley, PMO Chief of Staff Ray Novak, Nigel Wright, Rabbi Mendelsohn, and Mr. Paquette who was the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister at HRSDC; and that the committee report its findings to the House.
I think the request is fairly straightforward. Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has made a finding against Minister Finley and it has raised a number of questions regarding this very important project funding, how the funding was dealt with in this case with the Rabbi Mendelsohn proposal, which was pretty much at the bottom of 167 applications. How it was moved toward the top is a question Mary Dawson was unable to get complete answers to, but she raised a number of questions.
I'm going to go through them quickly, so as not to take too much of people's time.
She recommended on a number of occasions that section 7 be broadened to cover all cases where preferential treatment is found; therefore, we had talked about the issue of section 7 in the review.
She states that this project received preferential treatment. She says that Nigel Wright told the commissioner that he was taken aside by Minister Finley and approached to ask if this project was politically important. Her findings are:
It was clearly inappropriate that the funding went to the Markham project.
The one conclusion that I can draw is that Ms. Finley clearly afforded preferential treatment in relation to the Federation’s Markham proposal in singling out that proposal for an external evaluation and ultimately for funding.
Ms. Finley’s decision to fund it was improper within the meaning of section 4 and that she should have known that, in making the decision, she would be in a conflict of interest under subsection 6(1).
The funding decision may have been influenced by political considerations, but the reasons why this proposal was given preferential treatment remain unclear.
I think that last part is why we need to look at this, to reassure the public that very good projects, funding pots of money like this, are not interfered with politically to allow projects that shouldn't be approved to get ahead of projects that have met all the legitimate requirements.
For that reason, I would like to have our committee deal with this. This is within the purview of our committee. Mary Dawson reports to our committee. We have dealt with the issue of conflict of interest at this committee. I think this would be a good study. It would be a timely study.
Again, with this project coming up for a new round of applications, we need to reassure the public that whenever money is being spent, the people who are receiving that money are not just insider friends but rather the people who really should receive the money, and that the projects that are given money are actually able to meet their requirements and fulfill their duty.
In this case, we saw that $1 million was handed to a project that wasn't planned. It fell through, and it cost the taxpayers $50,000. We need to do better.