It's a good question. I think the one thing I would encourage a successor to keep is consultation, and this is where I think consultation has become particularly important. There was an issue that was brought before the courts by Democracy Watch, which found that is where the real or apparent conflict of interest had come in. So the previous code had rule eight, which dealt with conflict of interest but didn't have the specifics of real or apparent, and it was placing a public officer in it. After that ruling, I issued guidance on political activities because, for the particular event, the court case had dealt with fundraising.
What I found was that the guidance went out. There was a lot of stuff by the lobbyists who weren't happy, a lot of stories in the media about the conflict of political activities and restrictions. And the rule became very much known as “political activities” as opposed to “creating a conflict of interest”. That was one where—now looking in hindsight, maybe going back from what I learned with the consultation specifically in the code and since then—consulting and getting individuals to understand things would have probably made a difference in terms of that. That was, maybe, I don't want to say a backlash, but the unexpected...of applying a court case; I think it would have been better had there been consultations maybe with the lobbyists to say that this has changed and this is what it means. What I found for a period of time was that the rule really became almost about political activities. People were forgetting that there are other ways to place a public office holder in a conflict of interest, namely the gifts and the whole thing of preferential access. So that would be one of the things I learned over the years.