Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Melanie Mortensen, a lawyer in my office, has been working with me on this file, so I asked, with your indulgence, to be accompanied before the committee today by Ms. Mortensen.
I notice you announced the purpose of this meeting as being to do with disclosure forms, but I had the impression, from what we received from the clerk of the committee, that our mandate was a bit larger than simply disclosure forms. It's an e-mail that I received on May 4 that talked about Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, and the draft letter that's been proposed to go to the government House leader, and there are other general comments and perhaps some specific comments about the code.
Now, we are prepared to go forward on that basis. I would talk about Bill C-2 and the problems that remain, in our view, with Bill C-2. Then on the code, we have the benefit of the report of the Library of Parliament researchers. I don't know whether this is a report that's been distributed to members of the subcommittee yet, but in any event, it's a convenient tool because it sets out all the sections of the code. We went through it and we have some issues, and Ms. Mortensen will take the subcommittee through that piece by piece. I will talk about trusts in there, and I'll have some comments about the draft letter to the government House leader, as well.
I have asked the clerk to distribute copies of the relevant sections of Bill C-2 to members of the committee. I hope you have them there--there are the French and English versions. There are only the four sections I want to talk about, and they all interrelate, but I should take you through them one at a time, to begin with.
What you have there is subsection 6(1) and 6(2). The marginal note in subsection 6(1) in English is “Decision-making”; in French it's Prise de décision. In subsection 6(2), “Abstention from voting”; abstention de voter. It's subsection 6(2) that is of concern here. I'll come back to that.
The next section is section 21, which requires public office holders to recuse from debates or votes.
The next one of interest is section 30, which gives the Ethics Commissioner powers to make a compliance order against a public office holder, and includes recusal.
Then subsection 64(2) is the subsection dealing with whether certain activities would or would not be acceptable where they're done on behalf of constituents.
Now, just to set the context, these provisions were addressed by my office when I appeared before this committee in respect of Bill C-2. Again, the submissions made--