Information & Ethics Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[Mary Dawson]

It's just about right. We actually have only 47 there at the moment. There's a little bit of uncertainty in my world as to how many investigations we're going to have although it seems to have evened off a fair bit, so there's not a lot of uncertainty. This year there will be continuing extra work because of the significant change of government. It will carry on into the next year; in fact, we're into the next year now. I think it's about right.

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

Just so I get a better sense of how that staff time is allocated—I'm probably missing something—there is initial compliance work, maintaining compliance, then there are investigations and review and penalties imposed. Am I right that last year there were fewer than 40 new investigations?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, that's about the order of investigations, between 30 and 40, usually in the mid-30s.

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

So for 49 positions there were fewer than 40 investigations. What is the majority of an individual's time spent on?

[Mary Dawson]

The investigations are handled by the investigations section and there are only three or four individuals in there. One is off on maternity leave at the moment.

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

Then the remainder.... We have six executives so we're down to 43, and three to four individuals so we're down to 39 to 40 positions. What do they spend their time on? How is that time allocated?

[Mary Dawson]

The largest section is the advisory and compliance. They are 37% of our personnel and 26% of our budget in fact. They're slightly under 20, maybe 16 , 18, 17, and they do a number of the tasks. They save the reports, and they are the ones who get the questions from the individuals, and we get lots and lots of questions either by phone or by writing. That's the bulk of our staff right there.

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

Okay. For example, there is the initial compliance work that has to be done in the first 60 to 120 days. That would be a significant amount of work, I suppose, with the incoming members.

[Mary Dawson]

Yes.

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

But after that, does the work not die down significantly?

[Mary Dawson]

It's taking a certain amount of time for.... This particular year, it's particularly busy because, for example, ministerial staff continue to be appointed so their 60 and 120 days are moving forward and through the year. There was that plethora of members and we only have a third of them finished by now. They don't have the same level of deadlines as under the act. Then once we get through that cycle, of course, there are the annual reviews for everybody. They will start before we're finished, I suspect, with this round. Then there are also changes in people's portfolios and changes in their life that we deal with throughout the year. We get, as I say, many questions for advice.

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

Is it fair to say that there are waves of work? What I'm trying to get at is if there's an initial compliance period and that takes up a significant amount of time, would it make a certain sense to increase resources at that time, and then you'd ultimately decrease resources later on?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, we brought on three terms, I think it was, in anticipation of the new government, not knowing what it was going to be, and we needed those three terms. But all those terms will end.

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

And that does affect the 49 positions that you referred to?

[Mary Dawson]

Those are not counted in the 49.

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

I see. So in your view the 49 positions are necessary for ongoing compliance work.

[Mary Dawson]

Right.

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

I doubt this is the case, but in my previous life I had to docket all of my time. That doesn't occur here, so we don't have a good sense of exactly how individuals' times are allocated.

[Mary Dawson]

No, we don't do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

All right. We'll now move to Mr. Kelly, for up to seven minutes, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I want to build on some of the answers you gave to Mr. Erskine-Smith about the personnel and how time is allocated. Specifically, I've heard from other members a certain degree of frustration from time to time in dealings with your office over getting clear answers to questions about potential conflicts of interest on things like attending events, or the acceptance of gifts of nominal value as matters of protocol, or unsolicited items that people send to offices, these kinds of things.

Some members are frustrated that they have a hard time getting a hard and fast answer as to whether something is required to be disclosed or not, whether something is a matter of public interest or not.

It would seem to me that you have a fairly large department of people. Are these frustrations around clarity a matter of resources and not having the people available, or is it a training issue or a need for a better understanding of rules and how to communicate them?

Could you comment on whether you think your resources are adequate and how these concerns that some members have could be better addressed?

[Mary Dawson]

Gifts—mainly the things you've raised—have been the biggest problem since I started this job. There are split feelings, I think, amongst MPs in particular, but amongst others—because of course, my largest group is the reporting public office holders and the public office holders. There are mixed feelings about the legitimacy of the rules, and there's a certain amount of resistance to what the rule is, I find.

It is a complicated subject because each decision has to be taken on the basis of the individual's connections with other people or with the people giving the gifts. I have an extensive set of guidelines, about 10 pages long, under the act. With respect to the code, I have tried to get guidelines. I have actually left guidelines with the procedures committee, which looks after the MPs' code, to consider, because under the code they have to be approved by the committee. I have done everything I possibly can to get guidelines out there.

Frankly, I think the resistance is more on what the rules are than on how they're being administered.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by “resisting”. When you say there's resistance out there, who is resisting what?

[Mary Dawson]

Well, you hear it; you hear muttering, frequently. When I come to committees, quite often I hear comments about people being offered a shrimp at a cocktail party and whether they should accept it or not. There are a lot of facetious comments made about the gift rules. I have always said there are normal courtesy rules. If something's worth under $25 or $35, I'm not going to worry about it normally—and I've put all those sorts of things in my guidelines.

The other thing that's raised gifts to the fore this year is that the lobbying commissioner put out some rules on gifts, and the lobbyists have gotten quite excited about them. In her rules, there's a cross-reference to my act, so we're getting a lot of requests from lobbyists as well to interpret our rules, and of course, you can't interpret them generally for lobbyists because each individual member has a different relationship with various lobbyists.

It's a complicated subject.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

It would seem your challenges are around the legislation itself, not resources.