Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to the ethics committee's report.
The bottom line is that this report, as we have heard in the speeches so far, clearly represents one of the more egregious, but unfortunately not uncommon, examples of a complete hijacking of the legislative process, in this case of the legislative committee process, by the executive.
There is absolutely no explanation for what happened in this committee and what has happened with this report other than that the Prime Minister's office and the government in general intervened not only to direct but to control what came out of that committee.
It is not at all surprising that the government's three-paragraph response to the majority report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics says simply, “The Government welcomes and supports the sixteen recommendations outlined in the Committee’s report and agrees with the intended improvements to the COIA”. Well, pas de miracle, it is not surprising. The committee majority clearly worked in lockstep with the government to produce these 16 recommendations.
When I say worked in lockstep, that is a generous categorization of what the committee members probably did. Given everything we know about the testimony that was heard and how well it was digested by the officials in the first part of the report, which was not at all reflected in the recommendations, it rather seems to me that these committee members from the government side, the Conservative Party members of the committee, either did not have minds of their own or were literally directed as to what to do and what to put in that report.
If we had a functioning parliamentary system, this committee would have done its work unimpeded by the executive branch. It would have issued its recommendations and then the government would have decided which recommendations it was comfortable with and which ones it was not. It would have had to have stepped up to the plate to say “this is what we are prepared to do”, rather than creating a complete and utter travesty of the fusion of the executive and the legislature by saying, “Oh, we like the 16 recommendations that came out from the committee; we accept them”. It is no surprise, because the books were cooked by the executive. This whole process was a waste of time for the witnesses and for the members of the committee who actually tried to make the committee work.
The dissenting report by my colleagues, led by the member for Timmins—James Bay, makes very clear how little listening there was on the part of the Conservative members of the committee, or as I have already described, the government sitting at the shoulders of or behind those members.
The ethics commissioner indicated in her own report of 2013-2014 in respect of Conflict of Interest Act that she suggested 75 different recommendations. On page 34 of her “2013-2014 Annual Report”, she said, “I was pleased to see in the Committee’s report that it agreed with a few of my own recommendations”. She is biting her tongue. “In Recommendation 6, the Committee suggests...” and she described it. “In Recommendation 14, the Committee suggests...” and then she described it.
Out of 16 recommendations, the ethics commissioner isolated two recommendations that had come from her 75 recommendations. Of the 16 recommendations the majority of the committee put forward in its report, 11 of the 16, as the NDP's dissenting report itemized, were not reflected in the evidence in terms of either written or oral testimony.
Let us look at recommendation number one, which has rightly caused such outrage, and should. It says, in the majority report:
That the definition of “public office holder” be changed to include:
Members of organizations that collectively bargain with the Government of Canada;
Frankly, this is an out-of-the-blue, gratuitous, ideological attack on the very idea of unionized civil servants, quite apart from what I am about to get to, which is the complete unworkability of this.
Contrast it with how the majority somehow manages to avoid those in a contractual relationship with the government who are not subject to collective bargaining agreements. Somehow they are not included in the regime. Certain kinds of civil servants are, and other kinds of folks who work for the federal government are not. It is a pure attack on unionization, and it is a bloody ridiculous one as well.
The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, in her own report, says at page 31:
...the Committee proposes a very broad amendment to the definition of “public office holder”. It recommends that all members of organizations that collectively bargain with the Government of Canada be included. The implementation of this recommendation would essentially bring all employees of the Public Service of Canada (some 260,000 public servants are members of the various public sector unions) under the Act as non-reporting public office holders. These employees are already covered by the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector, which sets out its own requirements for the disclosure and reporting of interests, and is administered within federal departments.
She basically says “Wow” in very diplomatic under-speak, but it is clear that she is concerned and it is clear that she cannot figure out why the government would do something so unjustifiable and brazen. On June 10, 2014, in the ethics committee, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay had the chance to question the commissioner, and basically asked about this very inclusion of, as she already told us, 260,000 additional people. He asked:
One of the recommendations that the government brought forward on the conflict of interest review was to put all civil servants under the public office holders' rules.
Have you examined how that would actually be enforced and who it would include?
Her answer:
Yes. I found that a very surprising recommendation. I certainly read the minority report, which suggested that there would be something like 260,000 additional people whom my office would have to administer. That obviously says to me that it wouldn't be the same office. I found that a very surprising recommendation.
No wonder; it came from nowhere other than the ideological mess that passes for the Prime Minister's Office.
Then my colleague asked:
Would you be able to operate if you had to keep tabs on an extra 260,000 people?
This goes to the workability. Her answer:
No, I think it would have to be a rule-making body. It would be a totally different system, and somebody else would be administering it. Two-hundred sixty-thousand is a lot of people.
Clearly the commissioner is an expert at understatement, but she has made very clear what a travesty this recommendation is.
At this point I would like to quickly touch on some of the many recommendations from her and from other witnesses that were not acted upon, as also noted in the NDP's dissenting report.
Nothing was done on the front of penalties, for example. The NDP recommended increasing the penalties on the finding of a contravention to include suspension for a specified period, a suspension of a member's right to vote for a specified period, imposition of a fine not exceeding $5,000, and reimbursement of the value of any gift, hospitality or benefit. None of these make an appearance in the recommendations.
It is very important, speaking now as the critic for democratic reform and parliamentary reform that we have also asked that the act be amended to include guidelines that can then be interpreted and acted upon by the commissioner on fundraising and dealing with lobbyists.
Ministers, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries—
I will now call them the ministry.
—should not seek to have departmental stakeholders included on fundraising or campaign teams or on the boards of electoral district associations....
[The ministry] should ensure that government facilities and equipment, including ministerial or departmental letterhead, are not used for or in connection with fundraising activities....
[The ministry] should not discuss departmental business at any fundraising event, and should refer any person who wishes to discuss departmental business to make an appointment with the [appropriate person].
Finally, it says that the ministry should ensure:
...that fundraising communications issued on their behalf do not suggest any connection between fundraising and official government business.
Indeed, the commissioner added her own suggestion before the committee on June 10. She said:
I have suggested in my five-year review document that the government consider making ministers and parliamentary secretaries not do any fundraising at all....
That certainly does not appear in the recommendations.
With that, I end my remarks, except to say that I would like to make a motion.
I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
The First Report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics, presented to the House on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, and related to its statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act, be not now concurred in but that it be referred back to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics with instruction that it amend the same by removing recommendation number one and amending the other recommendations with a view to: (a) give the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner the power to administer financial and administrative penalties; (b) enshrine the Conflict of Interest Code into law; (c) allow members of the public to make complaints to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; and (d) make part-time or non-remunerated ministerial advisers subject to the ethics code.