Mr. Chair, I welcome this opportunity to comment on division 15, part 3, of Bill C-4. These provisions would amend the Conflict of Interest Act. Why they're in a budget bill is beyond me, but they are.
Mr. Chair, as members know, the act already applies to some 3,000 federal public office holders. Approximately 1,100 of these public office holders are reporting public office holders.
These amendments are inspired chiefly by the excellent work of a senior partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, who heads up the firm's government ethics, transparency, and political law practice, one Guy Giorno, former chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada and former chief of staff to the Premier of Ontario. He has presented to the committee an extremely well-reasoned brief with respect to these changes.
We know that the current exceptions under the act are narrow. They apply to full-time ministerial appointees. However, clauses 288 and 289 of the bill are going to add an additional open-ended category of membership in the public office holder and the reporting public office holder groups, specifically any person or class of persons designated by cabinet.
This pretty much means, Mr. Chair and colleagues, that cabinet's power to designate new public office holders and reporting public office holders would be unlimited and could be based on virtually anything. The minister may think that someone with blue eyes should be designated as opposed to someone with green eyes, somebody who wears black suits as opposed to blue suits. There's no criteria. It's unlimited and far-reaching. It places no restrictions whatsoever on cabinet's power to designate individuals and classes of individuals as being subject to the act.
The government has not indicated who, if anyone, might be designated if these provisions are in fact passed and come into force. The budget is silent on this point. In fact, Mr. Chair, the budget plan never suggested that the Conflict of Interest Act should or would be amended. On the contrary, the budget plan said—and here I think the budget plan was right—that other financial sector statutes should be amended to bring them in line with the Conflict of Interest Act as it presently is constituted.
The Canadian Bar Association is opposed to these changes. It wants to see other changes that would catch important offices, such as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who is presently excluded from the act.
These amendments seek to circumscribe the power of cabinet to designate anybody it feels it should designate. All colleagues should be extremely worried by this kind of wording, in terms of our present and future lives.
I wanted to open up with those comments, Mr. Chair, and I welcome comments from colleagues.
Thank you.