Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 11th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

If I may, I can vouch for that. I have a 19-year-old daughter, and it did ask where she worked. Members may remember that we had a situation here in Ottawa where a young lady left a Wendy's and was accosted. I don't think information about where my children work is necessary.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

That is my first question.

I do not recall indicating where my daughter worked. I'm sorry, but I will always refuse to state that, this being for the safety of my children. People will never know where my girls work.

Secondly, is this the procedure? Is this the way to do things? Are we to pass a motion in committee and send it to the commissioner? Does the Commissioner have the power to change that? A parliamentary committee passes a motion and sends it to the commissioner. Imagine the power we would have over the Ethics Commissioner. We could pass all kinds of motions and send them on to the commissioner, who would have to do our bidding.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

We do have that power.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

If I could respond to that, the committee does have that power.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I was asking the question.

I'm not going against what Scott has done, I'm just asking, do we have that power?

When we send it to the commissioner, does he have the power to change that or does it have to be done through a ministerial rule change, or rather in the House?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Reid, would you like to respond to that?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

In subsection 30(2) of the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, it says: Any rules approved by the Committee shall be reported to the House and shall come into effect when the report is concurred in by the House.

It's intended that all the rules and administration of the code will be supervised by the committee. When the commissioner was here, I specifically asked him why he was requiring the public reporting of this kind of information. It's hard to see how this kind of information would help to ensure that public scrutiny will prevent conflicts of interest from occurring.

He said that the reason he was doing it was that he had been told by this committee. Frankly, I don't recall him being told that. But in response to a specific question, he said that's why he's doing it.

I then asked him, if we recommend that you stop doing this, would you consider that to be a countermand to the previous instruction that you believe you received? He said yes. So I'm simply following through on that.

I do note also that in the summaries made available to the public, there's quite a long section of the code, section 24, where it says, in the relevant part of this, that “any other asset, liability or source of income that the Ethics Commissioner determines should not be disclosed” can be left out if the information is “not relevant to the purposes of this Code”--and I don't think this information is relevant to the purposes of the code--or if it is “a departure from the general principle of public disclosure” to release this information.

Again, I think this departs from the general principle regarding public disclosure. This would allow us to simply bring the application of the code better into conformity with the purposes of the code.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Simard.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

If I have a concern here, it's that I do believe we have the power to make these adjustments and make these changes, but I also believe we have the responsibility to look at the whole code. I don't believe these were the only issues brought up with the commissioner the other day. Several issues were brought up. Some people mentioned a spouse's credit card balance, which is absolutely ridiculous.

I'm not sure if we're going to be speaking to future business, but I think one thing we should do is review the whole code and make some recommendations, as opposed to just cherry-picking and identifying these issues as being the major issues. I would probably agree with this in principle, but I think we have a responsibility to review the whole thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Hill, please.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I think all of us would agree with that, given the problems we've had over the past year or two with the ethics commissioner's--I'll put it this way--perception of the code and how he has to administer his duties in relation to the code. He himself, as Mr. Simard suggests, has brought forward some concerns about some of the, for lack of a better term, grey areas, that we can perhaps assist him or any future ethics commissioner in tightening things up.

I'm not opposed to that; I don't think any of the members of the committee are opposed to having a look at that. My only concern would be that this might be something that's going to take a while. While I agree with Mr. Simard—his term was cherry-picking—we don't want to do this piecemeal. We want to make sure that whatever changes all of us can suggest and reach consensus on, we will go forward in a more comprehensive manner.

I'm just a little concerned that we might have a situation in the meantime where information is released about family members that is irrelevant. If it's going to take, I don't know, several months or whatever to do a proper review of the code, if we're all in agreement that the information shouldn't be released, then why wouldn't we just do it?

As well, I would agree with Mr. Simard that we immediately consider a thorough review.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Simard, and then Mr. Godin.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Yes, I think we're very close. For instance, in this motion here, I probably would agree that we should take the children's names off that list, but maybe we want to keep our spouses there, where they work and all that. I do believe we have to have that discussion. I just think this is premature. I would think that if you were to indicate children instead of relatives, it would probably pass today. I think that's the major concern, if I'm not mistaking Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I can respond or just wait until later on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Would you just hold, because I want to go to Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Earlier on, I simply wanted some information so as to know whether we were going in the right direction.

I'm prepared to support this motion. Whether it has to do with relatives or children, the public does not need to know their place of work. That is a safety issue. I'm prepared to vote on this motion today.

With respect to the code, we will have time to deal with it. We could do so according to established standards.

In this case, we are dealing with the safety of parents and children. Perhaps I missed something, but I can assure you that I would never publicly mention the place of work of my children, for the safety of my family.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Guimond.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

I would like to suggest a compromise. We could study the ins and outs of spousal relationships. I should say that I am rather more in favour of this motion than against it. However, spouses should not serve as a front for questionable activities.

When it comes to ethics — that was one of the key issues of the last election campaign — the prerequisite should be transparency. If we've got nothing to hide, let's go. Personally, I think we should seriously consider the issue of spouses. I share Mr. Godin's concerns about children. Actually, we are looking to further protect children.

I would suggest the following compromise. On the issue of children, we could continue along the same vein, and then do a more thorough assessment of the issue of spouses. I'm not going to disclose any caucus secrets, but some colleagues say that our spouses collaborate with us and support us during the election campaign, but they are not members of Parliament nor did they run as candidates. Our spouses ask us to respect them. My spouse has nothing to do with this. Why should she have to open up all of her drawers?

Are we currently sitting in camera? No? All right.

So I would suggest this compromise. Let's go ahead with the children and do a more thorough examination of spouses. When we introduced the notion of spouses, some of my colleagues...

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order, please, colleagues.

It sounds to me like we'd have a consensus if the motion were changed to “children”, defining “children” as under twenty.

Is everybody okay with that?

Are you okay, Mr. Reid, with changing the motion to “dependent children”?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Actually, I'm fine with that.

I'd just ask the question, what's the preference? I guess I'd ask you if you would ask the committee that. Is the preference to make that change and pass it now, or would it be preferable to just wait and perhaps ask our researcher to take a look at that and give people a chance to go back and chat with their colleagues and find out if there are other concerns? That might be the best way to do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Then we will prepare a report for Tuesday? We have all of that on record.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

But the minimum idea would be to go with “dependent children”, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Yes, that would be the intent of this particular motion.

Agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Great. Then we will get that report prepared for next Tuesday's meeting.

Second on my list of future business is the subcommittee on Parliament Hill security, a subcommittee that we set up the other day.

Monsieur Guimond, you were volunteered for that committee, and I want to thank you very much. Are you happy with that?