Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that, and I'll go slowly for my colleague. Thank you for that reminder.
In PROC, we studied the virtual Parliament and the many implications for our interpreters. Some of them included injuries that they could get in their ears—from acoustic shock, I think they called it. I'll try to be more mindful of that. My apologies to the interpreters.
I was referring to The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics. In particular, I think it's interesting to look at the chapter on conflicts of interest. As a term, “conflict of interest” actually hasn't been around very long. This is not that relevant, but it's important for us to understand that it's a morally peculiar concept, and that's what the scholars in this particular text talk about.
There are different levels at which we can consider this morally peculiar concept. One thing I would point to is that it originated only in the 1970s in organizational conversation, and only really got a full-blown definition many years later. It really hasn't been around that long, in terms of Canadian history and organizational history.
Even within the lifetime of someone such as the Prime Minister, conflict of interest was not something that was necessarily talked about. This is not me making any comments about whether he should or shouldn't have known the definition, etc. It's in the Conflict of Interest Act, and everybody knows we all agreed to it when we became members of Parliament.
What I think is interesting is that the scholars argue that one can be in a conflict of interest just by virtue of the position they find themselves in within a certain occupation. In essence, if you think about me managing a company, I can be in a conflict of interest just by virtue of the fact that I'm the CEO of a company and my position makes me responsible for certain things, and I've had relationships in the past. I've taken on that position, and all of a sudden something occurs that puts me in a conflict of interest, unbeknownst to me. You can become embroiled in a conflict of interest, or a perceived one, without necessarily knowing it but just by virtue of the position you hold.
This is well documented in the text I refer to. Maybe I can read a few passages out of this. This one in particular is, I think, important. Actually, I think it is by someone who may have even appeared as a witness at some point. Wayne Norman and Chris MacDonald wrote this chapter in the Oxford handbook. They say:
Most careful definitions [of conflict of interest] place a primacy on picking out a particular kind of situation. A person has a conflict of interest because of the kind of situation she finds herself in, not simply because of the actual state of her own desires, interests, motives, and so on.
This is interesting. It means that conflict of interest is actually situational. It's not that you're a bad person because you find yourself in a conflict of interest.
Now, of course our Conflict of Interest Act tells us what individuals are expected to do if they find themselves in a conflict of interest, but I would argue that we have to become aware that we're in a conflict of interest first. If we're in that situation unbeknownst to us—if our mother or brother had done some speaking engagements and somehow we didn't know it—then we could find ourselves in a conflict of interest unbeknownst to ourselves and not necessarily have the awareness of the information we would need to identify that we're in a conflict of interest.
This is a perfectly plausible, rational explanation for how the WE Charity issue or misstep—I would call it no more than a misstep—could have happened.
If you look at this text even further, there is another.... Let me just go back for one second. I know you are not finding this riveting, but I am. I am nerding out here, showing my true colours. This is really relevant to this motion and understanding what conflict of interest actually is.
The text reads: “At the end of the day, an employee or professional may be expected to exercise moral restraint to prevent her own interest from clouding her judgment, but before then she will generally be expected to take concrete steps to escape the conflict, disclose it, have it managed” or as a last resort recuse herself. These are normally expectations that go along with certain positions where conflict of interest may arise more frequently.
Managers and leaders within organizations are generally expected to exercise judgment. I would argue, though, that they would have to have a support system around them in order to identify when they may be in a conflict of interest unbeknownst to them. This is the importance of culture. Within ethical theory, organizational culture has become the most prominent topic of conversation. People realize that you can't have ethical leadership without having an ethical culture and cultivating a kind of ethical culture within your organization.
I want to read another quote, which is probably the one that had the most influence on me and is really the most relevant piece of information out of this particular text. I have more, but in this particular text, this would be the quote I would go back to over and over again, because it really speaks to just how easy it is for a leader as important and responsible for so much.... When taking on a role that has so many overlapping duties and such a high degree of responsibility, conflict of interest would actually be happening quite often.
We heard this in Katie Telford's testimony, where she said numerous times that she had regular contact with the Ethics Commissioner and his office. They went back and forth many times. It was also disclosed by the Prime Minister that his wife had volunteered with WE Charity and had been reimbursed for her expenses. This was out in the open. This was long before WE Charity and the Canada student service grant.
I'll go back to this quote, and I'll slow down. I apologize. I tend to speed up when I've been talking for a while. I just forget.
This quote is really impactful:
The minor revolution that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century was the recognition that responsibility for managing what we now call conflicts of interest cannot merely be left to the honor and courage of the professional or public official. It is not that professionals suddenly became dishonorable, cowardly, or corrupt. The cognitive bias literature confirms intuitive suspicions that “interests” really do interfere with the judgment of even honorable and courageous professionals.
What this means, my honourable colleagues, is that you can be honourable and courageous as a professional and still occasionally make a mistake around a perceived or even an actual conflict of interest. In fact, it's the culture of organizations that needs to provide support systems around our leaders and managers to ensure that they flag these, that they recognize them and then deal with them appropriately.
Putting all of the blame on and demonizing the Prime Minister and his family and trying to tie them into this conflict of interest, or supposed conflict of interest—because I really don't see that there actually is one.... Again, when you look at the fact that it's a binary decision and you can't sway the decision-making from one proponent to another, there's no latitude to sway decision-making.
Also, what private interest was the Prime Minister furthering? Was it his own? He wasn't making money off WE Charity. Was WE Charity, even in the contribution agreement, able to hire speakers? No, they were not. There was no budget line for speakers.
Furthermore, within a contribution agreement, there is always a conflict-of-interest clause, so with the fact that WE Charity was signing on to an agreement, obviously that agreement never got fulfilled due to this supposed controversy, but it's a shame that the charity, imperfect as it was—and it certainly, I'm sure, had some internal flaws—has closed up shop in Canada. I know full well that it did quite a lot of substantial, impactful work on the ground in communities. Schools and students are worse off because that charity has now left our country as a result of this matter that, in my view, is not a conflict of interest.
Going back to this text, which I think is one of the central texts if anybody is interested in really, truly understanding organizational culture and how it impacts conflict of interest and how we manage conflicts of interest, to look at this is really important.
If we were studying how we can improve the culture within the public service and even within the offices of ministers and the elected officials in cabinet, to flag these things earlier and deal with them more effectively would be something that I would be interested in working on and supporting, and so on, but that's not what we're here to talk about today. We're here to talk about a motion that, for all intents and purposes, just seems like a fishing expedition with no logical....
I operate on the principle of sufficient reason, which is what philosophy taught me from very early days. I learned in first-year philosophy class as the fundamental principle of debate that if you can't make a good, rational, logical argument, don't use the logical fallacy of the sophist to try to get your way. Don't attack the person.
I would never attack Mr. Warkentin, never, ever. It's not in my blood. I might disagree with you to the end of time, but I will not attack you as a person. I won't; I just won't. Therefore, why is that okay for parliamentarians to do? It's not appropriate. I'm sorry, but I just have to draw the line there and I really feel passionately and strongly about that.
What else was I going to say? I had a couple of other points.
Oh, yes, this is another important point—