Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Commissioner, for being here and for putting up, as unfortunately so many of our witnesses have to do, with the fact that our proceedings get interrupted by votes. That's something that unfortunately cuts short some very fulsome testimony, and I regret that.
I wanted to concentrate on section 14 of the code. You had made some recommendations on how to deal with the code. I wanted to run another possibility by you and ask your thoughts on it.
Recently, in November of last year, you sent out a notification to members titled “Acceptability of gifts offered in conjunction with lobby days”. I'll quote from what you say there. You quote from section 14 of the code in your comments. You say:
You may be offered gifts or benefits in conjunction with lobby days. I remind you that you are prohibited under the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons from accepting a gift that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence you. An acceptability test is set out in subsection 14(1) of the Members’ Code:
You then quote it.
Neither a Member nor any member of a Member’s family shall accept, directly or indirectly, any gift or other benefit, except compensation authorized by law, that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the Member in the exercise of a duty or function of his or her office.
Subsequent to that, you sent out a memo in December reminding people and saying that “Accepting gifts offered by people or organizations seeking to lobby you is prohibited under the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons. You must refuse such gifts. If you have already accepted them, you must return them immediately. Please review again the advisory opinion...”, which I just quoted.
This was in relation to some stuff that had been sent to members from the Canadian Health Food Association. They have a list of products here. I can table the list, but aside from a $10-off coupon at Kardish health stores they are all things that I can't regard as being reasonably regarded as gifts: a bunch of fish oil capsules, the October 2015 issue of Alive Publishing, some Bio-K+ probiotic capsules, etc.
By the time your memo had come to me at my office, I'd thrown all this stuff in the garbage, making it impossible to return it, thereby, I suppose, putting me in conflict with the code. But in all seriousness, I don't want to be in a situation where I have to, when I get unsolicited mail, be under a moral obligation to hunt down the person who sent it to me and send it back to them.
My question is, is there anything that would preclude you, as the code is written, in your opinion, from saying you must return it or dispose of it? Then perhaps you could have a form that we sign saying we just got rid of it. Ultimately, would that be acceptable or do we have to reword the code to allow something like that to happen?