Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 17th, 2025

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call this meeting to order.

I see Mr. Barrett wants to speak.

Welcome to meeting number three of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

Pursuant to the Standing Orders, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I have a rather long list here. I read it out the other day. I'm not going to read this every meeting, but just as a reminder to our colleagues in the room, we have to make sure our microphones and our earpieces are separated. There's a place that's designated for your earpiece on the table, and this is to prevent any injury to our interpreters.

The purpose of today's meeting is to conduct committee business. I'm going to go first and foremost to Mr. Barrett.

You have the floor, sir. Go ahead.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I have a motion that I'll move, and then I'll speak to it once you've ruled that it's in order.

I move:

That the committee

(a) report the following recommendations to the House at the first opportunity:

(i) that the Conflict of Interest Act, including the conflict of interest rules, disclosure mechanisms and compliance measures set out in it, be reviewed;

(ii) that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be designated to undertake the review;

(iii) that it be an instruction to the committee to consider, as part of its review, whether the act should be amended or expanded with a view to enhancing transparency, preventing conflicts of interest, avoiding potential or apparent conflicts of interest, regulating public office holders' ownership of assets in tax havens, limiting the availability of blind trusts as a compliance measure, extending the act's provisions to political party leaders and leadership candidates, and increasing penalties for non-compliance; and

(iv) that, at the conclusion of the review, the committee report its findings and recommendations to the House; and

(b) in the time between when these recommendations are reported to the House and the House dispenses with them, begin hearing witness testimony on the subject matter referenced in recommendations (i) and (iii), and the parties be directed to provide the names of their proposed witnesses to the clerk of the committee within two weeks of the adoption of this motion.

Mr. Chair, I've provided it to the clerk in electronic format in both official languages.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

I understand this is a slight modification to the motion you had on notice, but we are in committee business, and I'm going to accept the motion as being in order.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, can we suspend and have a look at the motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Why don't we let Mr. Barrett speak to it? That'll give you time to—

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Yes, because we want to read it and understand it very well.

We just want to make sure that we fully understand the motion that Mr. Barrett took the time to propose.

If he wants to continue, that's fine with me, but I just want you to keep in mind what I asked you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. I'm going to suspend, but not for more than five minutes, because we have to get started, and we have to go to Mr. Barrett so that he can speak to his motion.

The meeting is therefore suspended for five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm going to call the meeting back to order.

Mr. Barrett had moved a motion that has been distributed electronically in both languages to the members of the committee.

Mr. Barrett, when we left, you had the floor, sir.

Go ahead.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

This motion offers us an important opportunity to review an act that is foundational to the public's ability to have confidence in elected officials, particularly those subject to the act—designated public office holders, ministers and the Prime Minister. This act, in relative terms, isn't very old. It's less than 20 years old. It was reviewed most recently in 2014. Though a review isn't required, things change, and we learn as we go.

It's been well observed over my time on this committee and as a parliamentarian—and pollsters, journalists and columnists will often remind us—that Canadians' confidence in public institutions is low. I think we should look for opportunities to give Canadians reason to have confidence in their institutions and those who are the stewards of those institutions. In our case, we're talking about the government. We have the opportunity to do that.

This motion will allow us concurrently to have the matter sent to the House to be reported and, while we're waiting for it to be dispensed with, to continue our work so that we can really seize the day.

I don't want to belabour it. I think it's quite self-explanatory. I think that this is very timely. You don't want to wait until the eve of an election to start a study. We're at the start of a new Parliament. Now is the time. We haven't been sent any legislation from the House. From what the government has signalled, it doesn't look like this fall we're going to see legislation referred to our committee. This act is quite squarely within the purview of our committee. It relates to the things that we've discussed.

We had interesting conversations with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. I think this will build on the conversations we had the other day. Also, as I said, the real bottom line here is that we're presented with an opportunity to demonstrate our stewardship of Canadians' confidence in this institution by reviewing this act and making recommendations for changes where the evidence points us to do so.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

Mr. Thériault, you raised your hand. We are listening.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'd first like to point out a small typo or error in the French translation of the motion moved by Mr. Barrett.

The first sentence of paragraph (b) refers to the time between when these recommendations are reported to the House and when the House “les rejette”. In fact, my understanding is not that the House rejects them but that it dispenses with them.

I think the expression “disposer de” would be appropriate in this case, because we're talking about a period of time that elapses between when the recommendations are presented to the House, which I imagine will follow up on them—so the way the House dispenses with them—and the time the House takes to dispense with them, unless I'm mistaken. If the House rejects the recommendations, there is no motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Thériault.

I think the clerk has made the correction and written, “où la Chambre les dépose”.

[A voice]

It was suggested, “où la Chambre en dispose”.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

It would say, “où la Chambre en dispose”. Okay.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I would write, “où la Chambre en dispose”, because that's what it says in English.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Hold on one second.

I'll ask the clerk to send the corrected version of the motion to all members of the committee. The word has been changed, and the sentence in the motion has been changed.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault. I'll give you back the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I completely agree with the substance of this motion. After Monday's meeting, I think it's clear that the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is interpreting an act that can't address every possible scenario.

We have a rather unique situation right now, as I've actually presented. The idea isn't to target a single person but to ensure that Parliament, or the act, can properly regulate the various scenarios that may arise when people leave the x, y or z sector—most often the private sector—to occupy public offices or positions that would objectively place them in conflicts of interest. A review of the Conflict of Interest Act would make it possible to review the entire issue of how effective or ineffective conflict of interest screens are. I think that aspect is very well articulated. I think it's a necessity. The commissioner, in his testimony and his answers to the committee's questions, demonstrated that on Monday.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Thériault.

Monsieur Sari—just for some advice here, as I know we have some new members—if you want to speak on it, just let me know in advance, because sometimes things move quickly, and if I don't see any speakers, then we end up going to the vote.

Mr. Sari, go ahead on the motion, please.

[Abdelhaq Sari, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank Mr. Barrett for moving this motion. The objective of this committee and of each and every one of us is to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. We can obviously only agree on the objective of this motion. We can't be against doing the right thing. However, as members of Parliament, we can question how this motion is being proposed today.

I'll start with the first sentence of the motion. Mr. Barrett wrote it well. It proposes that the committee “report the following recommendations to the House at the first opportunity”.

Right off the bat, I don't think we can put it that way. The clerk and the analysts can no doubt correct us on that.

I think we have to study the recommendations first. Above all, this committee's role is to study this motion. It's also up to the committee to table, in the House, a report that includes findings and recommendations. It isn't the committee's role to make recommendations directly to the House through a motion.

According to Standing Order 109 of the House of Commons, which concerns the government's response to committee reports, a committee has to ask the government to table a response within an appropriate time frame. Mr. Thériault made that last point very clear. That way, the committee would receive a much more comprehensive response, which would be a direct response to the report that was tabled.

Without disagreeing with the substance of this motion—after all, that's the purpose of the committee, and we can only support it—I think it needs to be reworded. I don't think the first sentence of the motion is in order, because it goes against Standing Order 109.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I'll be more attentive and ask to speak a little earlier next time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Sari.

I don't see any other hands....

Ms. Church, is your hand up?

Okay, go ahead, please.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I agree that this is a very important motion and an important review. I share some of my colleague's concerns or questions about the actual process of bringing this forward and whether or not we need to be recommending this to the House before we conduct the actual study, which I believe the committee is empowered to actually proceed on once, of course, we fully debate and adopt the motion.

I have a couple of suggestions. I'm wondering if my colleagues might be amenable to consider adding them.

Mr. Chair, maybe I'll start with the first one, if you prefer. I'm new to committees. I'm not sure how we do this.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Here's what we do, Ms. Church. We don't generally take suggestions, because they have a tendency to not have any value to the motion itself. If you do have something that you would like to change, I suggest that you move an amendment to the motion. That would be the easiest way to deal with it.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Okay. Perfect.