Thank you for inviting me to participate. I'm tickled pink to do it, even from this distance.
The committee is looking at a very important policy development and I think it's high time that a code of conduct was developed to govern relationships between MPs. This would close a gap but others remain, as we'll see later in the discussion.
One of the things I would like to talk about in the opening comments is the complexities of what you are dealing with. One of them is the complex nature of the interactions between MPs. You know this better than I do that the business of the House of Commons is a subset of the business of an MP and the work that you do. In that regard the opportunities for MPs to interact with each other occurs not just within the precincts but off Parliament Hill as well within official House business as well as with party business, caucus business, civic affairs, diplomatic and municipal affairs, as well as private functions. The context in which possible aberrant behaviour arises is quite a complex setting.
From what I understand this code of conduct that you're looking to put in place would govern the work of MPs within the workplace of the House of Commons and that includes both on Parliament Hill as well as when you would be travelling. In that regard it would mirror something that the Senate has. I think it's vitally important to cover as much of the work of an MP as possible, both on site and off site.
The other complexity is the peculiar ways in which MPs do their work and the context of working within party caucuses. It's almost as if you were working for rival companies, if one were to use a private sector analogy. One needs to devise a policy that is trusted across those divides and ones where people from one party who have a complaint about the behaviour of another can have full confidence that the complaints will be looked at and dealt with seriously. One has to imagine a process in which competing camps with an adversarial nature have confidence that the process will treat everyone fairly. The other is that while there is a hierarchy in relations among MPs within a caucus there is also a theoretical equality. The code has to deal with MPs as equals but within the reality of working in a hierarchical framework.
Another problem is the legal framework in which Parliament works: the collective and individual privileges and immunities. On the one hand, there is the seemingly vast range of powers that Parliament has to deal with that, but this is also in some senses quite limited in geographical reach. If one were to put a code in place one has to look for an effective mechanism to deal with complaints that's fair, transparent, and wins public confidence. It would be necessary to have some third party investigate and mediate as appropriate. Different models could be following on the existing MP's staff model. It could involve whips, the chief human resources officer, or one could go to an outside official such as the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.
Finally, there's the problem of deciding about sanctions. Is this process simply to mediate, remediate, and make things better in relations between MPs or is one envisaging a process that might ultimately lead to a report to the House and possibly formal discipline, suspension, or expulsion? If the code were to go that far then there are some other considerations to bring in.
Thank you.