Information & Ethics Committee on May 1st, 2018

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

The reason I'm asking for an example is that, as far as I understand, you have 18 individuals who provide advice. You have 2,900 pieces of advice given over the course of the year, which is about 160 pieces of advice per individual. This gives us about thirteen and a half per month, which, assuming the piece of advice is relatively straightforward, really doesn't seem like a lot of advice given by each individual over the course of the year. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

[Mario Dion]

Some of the advice is simple; some is very complex. It may take several days to develop the advice, including consultations with legal services and the commissioner. It happens quite frequently that it is not simple. When MPs get in touch with us, it's usually because they're not able to find the answer themselves. There's a degree of complexity in a good proportion of the requests for advice.

We also fully document everything we tell an MP or a public office holder, so we have a chance to consult it in the future when the same MP or public office holder consults us. We have to be consistent, and we also have to be consistent between office holders. Documenting takes time as well.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Do the staff docket their time?

[Mario Dion]

They do, yes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Would you have an exact sense of how much time they spent per file?

[Mario Dion]

Yes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

What would be the average amount of time spent per piece of advice or direction?

[Mario Dion]

The director of compliance and advice is in the room somewhere.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's okay. There's no immediate urgency to this, so perhaps you could provide that in writing later on.

[Mario Dion]

Okay, we will.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

There are eight communications officials. You note there's been a 30% increase in the number of media requests, but over the course of a year, surely one person could field 400 media requests. What do the eight people do?

[Mario Dion]

One person, or full-time equivalent, fields media requests. The other people assist me in preparing for appearances like this. That's one example of what they do.

We have an Intranet site so we have well-informed employees. They also have the Internet page to maintain and keep up to date, as well as the public registry.

They also coordinate the work for the Canadian Conflict of Interest Network. All provinces and territories have an ethics commissioner, so they coordinate. They serve as the secretariat to what's called CCOIN, this association of federal, provincial, and territorial ethics commissioners.

The communications officers are also the ones who put together the strategic plan and the reporting under the strategic plan. I have a document, which I'm considering making public, which contains a number of performance indicators, based on the strategic plan.

That's grosso modo what the communications and outreach team is doing.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

I'll share my remaining minute with Ms. Fortier.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you very much.

I’d like to know which measures you take to assess your progress or the challenges you’re facing in your investigations.

[Mario Dion]

Our organization is small. Several times a day, I meet the director of investigations and the senior general counsel, who are, in fact, the same person. Once a week, we review each case in a structured manner. I spoke earlier of 15 cases, but the number varies a lot. This morning, there were 15, but in two weeks, there could be 12 or 21. I don’t know; it depends on what comes in and what goes out.

In everyday life, I take part in all interviews, especially when a complaint was filed against someone, and we’ve decided to launch an investigation. I’m in the room and I add questions to those asked by the investigator. I’m in a position to keep track of all the investigations at all time by consulting with the investigator or his or her chief, and by sitting in on interviews. I believe that it’s a very good practice that allows me to see how things evolve in a case.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Ms. Fortier.

Next up for five minutes is Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair, again.

Commissioner, in your letter to Chair Zimmer in March with regard to the MOU to work with the lobbying commissioner, you explained again, as you explained in testimony to us, that your respective statutes limit the areas of potential integration as they prohibit, you wrote, “the sharing of certain types of information”.

I know you're working on outreach and education. You're committed to working with the lobbying commissioner in that area, but, because many of the investigations in your office have a matching significant interest to that of the office of the lobbying commissioner, I'm wondering whether there might be a way in future for these two offices....

For example, with the investigation of the Prime Minister's trip, surely the lobbying commissioner has been following it with interest and perhaps investigating. We don't know. It would have been interesting to hear the story, not only as the Ethics Commissioner interviewed or spoke to the Prime Minister about the registered lobbying foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, but it would have been interesting to know the words or the response of both the Aga Khan and his foundation with regard to that investigation.

Do you not think there's some logic behind reciprocal or matching investigations? When an investigation finds violation on one hand, should there not be an investigation or at least a report by your counterpart in the lobbying commissioner's office?

[Mario Dion]

It would be great, Mr. Chair, if the act was amended to allow the other commissioner and I to exchange information when it's useful, but we are currently completely prohibited from doing so.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I understand.

[Mario Dion]

We cannot do it. It would be very useful. They're both positions of officers of Parliament, and I think we can have confidence that we would not do this lightly, that we would not make it public, and so on and so forth, and it would be an additional tool to make sure that what we do makes sense to the people who are subject to the act and the other act as well.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I think, with regard to your earlier remarks about unacceptable gifts, it would be interesting to know, again from the party that offers an unacceptable gift, not only the party who received and returned in one time frame or another.... To that point, again, is it not relevant to mention what the unacceptable gift that was offered and returned consisted of?

[Mario Dion]

I've given this some thought. Human beings are curious as well. It's always interesting to know something.

In the global scheme of the ethics theme, if somebody returns a gift very shortly after having received it, I'm not sure it serves a great purpose to make it public. I think it's a fact situation. It depends whether you return it after getting caught or you return it before getting caught. I think that makes a big difference as well.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Again, as you say, human nature is inquisitive, but there would be a significant difference between an unacceptable gift that exceeded $200 and one that perhaps exceeded $10,000 or $20,000.

[Mario Dion]

The value has a relationship with the interest, of course.