Mr. Speaker, I move that the third report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presented to the House on Monday, September 22, 2025, be concurred in.
I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, who is also a stalwart defender of openness, transparency, truth and accountability, as our shadow minister for ethics on the ethics committee.
The ethics committee has been in the process of studying a report and a review of the Conflict of Interest Act. As I reported to the House, what the committee is in the middle of studying right now includes the conflict of interest rules, disclosure mechanisms and compliance measures set out in the act.
The committee is also looking to the House to instruct the committee on whether the act should be amended or expanded with a view to enhancing transparency; preventing conflicts of interest; avoiding potential or apparent conflicts of interest; regulating public office-holders’ ownership of assets in tax havens, and I will have more to say on that in a few minutes; limiting the availability of blind trusts as a compliance measure; extending the act’s provisions to political party leaders and leadership candidates; and increasing penalties for non-compliance. The conclusion of the review calls for the committee to report its findings to the House.
The Conflict of Interest Act, quite frankly, has never contemplated a situation such as the one we are in right now, where we find a designated public office-holder with so many potential conflicts of interest because of extensive private sector holdings. We are really trying to focus on and narrow down how we can improve the Conflict of Interest Act and perhaps provide recommendations to the House, and certainly to the government, in amending the law in ways that would protect the transparency and accountability that Canadians so rightly demand.
It is not just about the one thing of having a conflict; the appearance of the conflict is also another thing. Quite frankly, there are many holes within the Conflict of Interest Act that allow for designated public office-holders, including those holding the highest office in the land, to use that act, with its many loopholes, to skirt around the law that exists today, and that would cause reasonable, thinking people in this country to question the motives and intention of a designated office-holder.
We are quite understanding of the fact that we cannot focus on things on a case-by-case basis, and that is why we are conducting the comprehensive study on the act to ensure that Canadians are confident that their designated public officers are not using their offices as a means to enhance or further their private interests and to gain financially as a result of their being in office.
As members will recall, the act is quite comprehensive, but it is to ensure that ethical governance exists. It is central to maintaining the integrity of public trust in government. It is also designed to prevent the misuse of power. It aims to prevent officials from using their positions, as I said, to further their private interests, and it aims to clarify obligations as well. Designated public office-holders have complex and varied responsibilities under the act.
It also provides for some oversight and accountability to strengthen oversight mechanisms so parliamentary reviews can identify gaps on enforcement and compliance, which is what the committee is doing right now, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the Ethics Commissioner. The committee oversees the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.
It is also to respond to public concerns, high-profile cases or controversies that may prompt the need for legislative review, which certainly we are seeing in the case of the Prime Minister right now. On modernization and reform, the intent of the committee is also to update outdated provisions.
The act may need revisions from time to time to reflect current realities, for example, digital assets and lobbying practices. I am very pleased to report that the ethics committee has passed a motion to study the Lobbying Act, which has not been reviewed since 2012 despite the legislative requirement of a five-year review. I know that the Commissioner of Lobbying is very much anticipating the review, and I expect that you, Mr. Speaker, will hear from committee or the House leaders, asking for the committee to conduct such a review.
It is also to address ambiguities. Some rules may be unclear or be inconsistently applied across different roles.
Certainly, first and foremost, it is to improve transparency by strengthening disclosure and reporting requirements that can enhance, ultimately, what the goal of all parliamentarians and designated public officers should be: to ensure that the public has the utmost confidence that designated public office-holders are not using their position to further enhance their financial portfolio.
Right now the committee is undertaking a review of the applicability to various roles, as ministers, parliamentary secretaries and senior officials have different levels of obligation. It will assess post-employment rules and consider exemptions and exceptions. Some provisions may allow for exceptions, which may need a little more scrutiny.
From a policy and legislative alignment standpoint, it should align with other ethics frameworks to ensure consistency with the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons and other federal ethics laws and certainly to support broader accountability, including transparency, lobbying and privacy legislation as well.
The committee is working. It is in the process right now of undertaking the study. There have been some pretty significant interactions with witnesses who have provided some suggestions to the committee that could eventually form the recommendations of a study that we ultimately present to Parliament, and have the government respond to many of the recommendations that may come. I certainly do not want to preclude any results of this.
Obviously the committee has more work ahead of it. There are more witnesses to appear, but also, as we draft the report and come up with recommendations, I can assure the House with some confidence that many of those recommendations will form a significant upgrade and allow for the Conflict of Interest Act to reflect the modern times and the situation we find ourselves in, where, in the case of the Prime Minister and his private interests, we have never had a prime minister as conflicted as the current one is, with having to declare 103 conflicts of interest, as well as stockholdings in the United States that represent almost 93% of his portfolio.
What makes it important, particularly with blind trusts and the ethics screens that have been set up, is that there are many loopholes within the current, existing framework of the act that can allow for a designated public officer to be directly engaged and involved in the decision-making process when, in fact that person should be recusing himself or herself from any decisions that are made, because there is a financial gain or a financial interest at play.
The committee wants to make sure that it is in a position to close the loopholes. There have been significant suggestions from witnesses who have appeared on how to do that, so that will form the basis of many of the recommendations the committee presents.
We also want to ensure that there is ethical governance. The act is central to maintaining integrity and public trust in government. In some cases, quite frankly, that trust has been eroded. In the Prime Minister's case, during the election he told a reporter that he holds only cash and real estate, but we found out subsequent to the ethics reporting that the Prime Minister has an extensive portfolio of holdings within companies, particularly affiliated with Brookfield and others, 93% of which are in the United States.
We also found out through witness testimony that while the Prime Minister was the head of Brookfield, taxes were dodged in tax havens to the extent of $6.5 billion. When Canadian companies do not pay their taxes, that is less money for services that look after vulnerable people, less for health care and less for education. Therefore, we want to ensure that public trust is restored, that designated public officers are held to the highest standard and that we review and modernize the Conflict of Interest Act to reflect the modern realities of Canada today.
