Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 1st, 2025

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call this meeting to order.

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

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3) and the motion adopted by the committee on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, the committee is resuming its consideration of the Conflict of Interest Act.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person. We will have someone on Zoom in the second hour.

I have a few comments for the benefit of members and witnesses. Please make sure that the headsets are placed away from the microphones. We want to make sure that we don't cause any damage to our interpreters, so be mindful of that. There are little stickers on the desk.

We are going to start with our first hour today. I want to welcome, from Democracy Watch, Mr. Duff Conacher, co-founder, board member and chairperson of the government ethics coalition.

Mr. Conacher, you have up to five minutes for your opening statement—

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I have a question about the agenda. We have three witnesses today, but they haven't been allocated equal times in our agenda. Is it possible that we are allocating our witnesses equal time as we proceed during this study?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I don't quite understand the question. We have three witnesses today. We have two coming in the second hour—Ms. Turnbull and Mr. Stedman—and we have Mr. Conacher for an hour today. It was an hour and an hour. The original intent and goal was to have two witness per hour, but it didn't end up that way so we ended up like this.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In future, I think it would be good for all our witnesses to have an equal opportunity to speak at committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

They will. Certainly, in the second hour they will.

Mr. Sari, is it on the same point of order?

[Abdelhaq Sari, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

I understand that the time allocation was not based on the subject, since there is only one.

We have three witnesses. The first will speak for half the time, and the other two will share the other half. Why didn't we allocate speaking time equally among the three witnesses?

It's the same subject in any case. It would have made sense to allocate speaking time in one-hour slots per subject if there had been two subjects to cover, but the three witnesses will in fact be speaking on the same subject.

On what basis was this decision made?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

It's a fair question. In the absence of any witness lists from any of the parties, we were working with the witness list from the analysts and the invitations went out. Mr. Conacher was available for this hour, and Ms. Turnbull and Mr. Stedman were available for the second hour. That's how.... It is difficult sometimes to manage and manipulate the way that witnesses are going to appear, but this is the way it's happening today.

As well, as a reminder to all parties, we need that witness list by today if you haven't sent it in.

We're going to start.

Mr. Conacher, you have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Duff Conacher, Co-founder, Board Member and Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch]

Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the invitation and opportunity to testify on the Conflict of Interest Act, one of Canada's most important laws for ensuring democratic good government.

I need to practise my French frequently. This topic involves many technical terms.

For these reasons, I will present mainly in English, but I welcome your questions in either language.

Democracy Watch is Canada's leading democratic reform, government accountability and government ethics advocacy organization. We have been operating since 1993, 32 years this week, and we have 41,000 supporters across the country. I'm also here representing the government ethics coalition, a coalition of citizen groups pushing for ethics reforms.

It's great the committee is holding open hearings, unlike the secretive, behind-closed-doors hearings that another House committee held in 2022 to review the MP ethics code.

Conservative MPs and Bloc MPs, you were asking some good questions, better questions about the act than have been asked by MPs at this committee in the past 20 years. It's great to see that, but you are still missing some key loopholes and flaws and not cutting through the obscurities and misleading haze about the act that the Ethics Commissioner, Konrad von Finckenstein, creates whenever he talks about the act.

Hopefully, Liberal MPs on this committee, you will set aside your talking points and prepared questions the cabinet and research bureau have prepared for you and actually listen and think about the seriously unethical, undemocratic and bad government actions that are currently legal under the Conflict of Interest Act and why long-overdue changes need to be made to ensure democratic good government now and into the future.

The Conflict of Interest Act, the related MP code and Senate ethics code and the codes that apply to federal government employees are among the most important laws and codes for ensuring democratic good government. Unfortunately—and Democracy Watch's written submission to the committee will provide all of the details section by section—the Conflict of Interest Act is a sad joke that, because of huge loopholes in the law, doesn't apply to 99% of the decisions and actions of the most powerful people in the government. The Conflict of Interest Act really should be called, because of these loopholes, the “Almost Impossible to be in a Conflict of Interest Act”.

The Conflict of Interest Act, which covers cabinet ministers, their staff and top government officials, does not prevent, prohibit or penalize conflicts of interest. It's truly Orwellian. In fact, the act is full of loopholes that allow powerful politicians and public officials in the federal government to have secret investments, to secretly participate in decisions when they have a clear financial conflict of interest and to secretly profit financially from their decisions. The act is weaker than the rules for senators and federal government employees and as weak as the rules for backbench MPs, which makes no sense at all. It is simply perverse that the most powerful politicians and office-holders in Canada's federal government have much weaker ethics requirements and standards than the least powerful public servants.

If you support the Conflict of Interest Act in its current form and if you support the weak and in some cases dangerous proposals for amendments that Ethics Commissioner von Finckenstein has put forward, you support protecting private interests, you support politicians and public officials profiting financially from their decisions, and you support unethical and corrupt policy-making, all of which clearly violates the public interest.

As The Globe and Mail put it in an editorial in June, a plan to make changes to make the Conflict of Interest Act actually effective is missing in action—“MIA”. The Conservatives made some promises in their election platform, but they were a bit vague and focused pretty much only on the Prime Minister's role and position. The Liberals, Bloc and NDP made no promises. The Globe's editorial also criticized the Ethics Commissioner's very limited recommendations in his annual report, which you have heard about from him, and in some cases those recommendations, again, would weaken the law.

Hopefully, instead of keeping this sad joke of a law that has done very little to clean up federal politics in the past almost 20 years, all federal parties will work together and go beyond the Ethics Commissioner's mostly bad recommendations to finally close all the loopholes in all federal political ethics laws and codes and strengthen enforcement and penalties, so that politicians and their staff and top government officials are no longer allowed to make unethical, self-interested decisions or secretly profit from their decisions.

I will now provide a quick summary of the “dirty dozen” loopholes in the act. Similar loopholes exist in the MP ethics code and the Senate ethics code, along with enforcement flaws. Again, Democracy Watch's written submission will provide all the details, including a link to my 900-plus-page Ph.D. thesis, which analyzed the act, codes and other federal democracy laws and recommended key changes, in case you want even more details.

I welcome your questions about anything concerning effective government ethics standards and enforcement after I briefly list the loopholes in enforcement. [Technical difficulty—Editor] rule requiring honesty.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm sorry, Mr. Conacher. We have five minutes, and we're over that time.

I'm going to suggest that if you want, you can refer to it if you're brief or if it comes up in questioning, but I'm going to have to stop you there.

[Duff Conacher]

That's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We're going to start with our first round of questioning.

I apologize for that, sir, but we want to get to the questions.

Mr. Cooper, you have six minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Conacher, Mr. Carney's ethics disclosure states that he's entitled to carried interest payments, a.k.a. future bonus pay, in respect of the performance of Brookfield's global transition funds, which he co-led efforts to raise billions of dollars of capital for.

What is missing from Mr. Carney's disclosure are the holdings in this fund of the companies that this fund is invested in. Would you agree that this is a significant and material omission from the standpoint of knowing the extent of Mr. Carney's conflicts of interest?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes. Unfortunately, though, the disclosure rules allow for secret investments, essentially. The details are not provided.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

It's a material omission. Would you agree?

Mr. Carney handpicked the holdings in the companies the fund is invested in, and therefore the companies that his future performance pay, worth potentially tens of millions of dollars, is tied to. Is that correct?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes.

When you have these kinds of general funds—again, it's legal to invest in some types of mutual funds and keep it secret—the details of what you're actually invested in is known to you but not disclosed to the public.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Mr. Carney, therefore, knows which public policy decisions will impact these holdings, which in turn impacts the future performance of the fund, which in turn affects the value of his future bonus pay. Meanwhile, Canadians are left in the dark.

Mr. Carney, as it pertains to his future bonus pay, is hiding his conflicts of interest from Canadians—isn't he?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes.

Again, it's legal to do that. What's even worse is that, because of the biggest loophole in the act, he's allowed to participate in decisions that affect his investments 99% of the time, because the definition of “private interest” in the act says that you are not in a conflict and the act does not apply when you are dealing with a matter that applies generally. Because 99% of the decisions the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers and top government officials make apply generally, the act only applies 1% of the time to very specific decisions.

As a result, it's almost impossible to be in a conflict of interest under this act.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

I agree with you on that point.

To be clear, with respect to disclosure, there's nothing that prevents Mr. Carney from disclosing the companies and the holdings of these funds. If he wanted to be transparent, he could simply disclose that information to Canadians.

[Duff Conacher]

Of course, you can always go beyond what's required in terms of disclosure and also compliance.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

However, Mr. Carney, of course, hasn't been transparent.

The global transition fund is listed in Mr. Carney's so-called ethics screen, but the holdings and the companies the fund is invested in, to which Mr. Carney's future performance pay is tied, have not been disclosed by Mr. Carney.

How possibly can the ethics screen function to screen out Mr. Carney from making decisions where he has conflicts of interest?

[Duff Conacher]

The ethics screen never works, again because of this huge loophole.

Ethics screens are a smokescreen that actually violate the law, because the act requires disclosure whenever you recuse yourself or step aside from participating in a decision, discussion or vote. The ethics screen allows you to not do that, so you're violating the law. What's hidden is that, in fact, you're participating 99% of the time in decisions that affect your investments, because of this huge loophole.

Again, you do not have to step aside when you're dealing with a matter that applies generally, and 99% of decisions apply generally, so the screens are a smokescreen that hides conflicts of interest. They do not stop them or prevent them in any way.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Do you have concerns about the fact that this screen is basically set up on the basis of trust in the Prime Minister's chief of staff and the Clerk of the Privy Council—to just trust them even though they answer to the Prime Minister and they serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes, very much so. Anyone who's serving at your pleasure is not independent.

I was very disappointed to hear Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein claim that they share the same interests as the Prime Minister in terms of keeping him away from conflicts of interest. Actually, the interest they share with the Prime Minister is covering up conflicts of interest.

These ethics screens, again, were created by the Ethics Commissioner. It's a loophole that's not in the act; it's created by the commissioner. Tomorrow, Konrad von Finckenstein could require full transparency under that ethics screen of every single time Mr. Carney is actually stepping aside from a decision. He could impose that as part of the conditions of the screen. It's really his screen. He sets the terms of it.

What it would show, if there was transparency, is that 99% of the time Mr. Carney is participating in decisions that affect his financial interest because the law allows for that, as the Ethics Commissioner acknowledged when he was testifying.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Mr. Carney has said that there's nothing to see here and everything is on the up and up because he's put his assets into a blind trust.

When we look, for example, at the funds in which he has future bonus pay waiting for him, what good is a blind trust when the Prime Minister is hardly blind to policy decisions that will impact his future bonus pay?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Give a very quick response, please.