Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up here today and speak to the statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act.
Statutory reviews are quite important. They are put into the statute for an annual review so that every five years members of Parliament can review the conflict of interest legislation through their committee and make meaningful recommendations. In this case, we are talking about the five-year review of the Conflict of Interest Act. The whole idea is that a committee of members from all parties of the House will listen to a number of witnesses and make some meaningful recommendations.
In this case, the report that has been presented here today is a complete farce, because the eight or nine recommendations that we see at the end of this report do not even resemble the text of the report itself.
I will highlight that. The text of this report was well put together by our committee, by our analysts, and by those in the Library of Parliament. The committee listened to a lot of the recommendations that came from a number of different witnesses. We held a number of meetings on this subject with witnesses from different universities, Democracy Watch, the Privy Council, York University, the Canadian Bar Association, the office of the lobbying commissioner, and different conflict of interest commissioners from across the country, including our own conflict of interest commissioner, and that is where I will start with trying to compare why this report is such a farce.
Our own conflict of interest commissioner made some 75 recommendations through her experience with the Conflict of Interest Act. Some of them were quite technical, and others were quite in depth in nature. She made some really good recommendations through her testimony. One only needs to read the body of the report to realize some of the recommendations that our commissioner put forward.
However, they did not make their way into the recommendations at all, except for one or two. That is sad, because after we listened to all of the testimony she gave, we could not come up with even some of her recommendations.
The body of the report is very well put together. It talks about the commissioner coming before the committee and making some 75 different recommendations, such as inserting new chapters into the act, definitions, rules of conduct, compliance measures, post-employment roles, and administration and enforcement. According to the commissioner herself, they are quite broad. She stated:
Some are quite broad in scope, some target specific provisions of the Act, and others are largely technical in nature.
It did not even include some of the technical amendments that she was recommending from her experience with the act, nor did it include her general themes and priorities, such as increasing transparency around gifts and other advantages, strengthening the act's post-employment provisions, narrowing the overall broad prohibition on engaging in outside activities, narrowing the overall broad prohibition on holding controlled assets, introducing some disclosure and reporting obligations for non-reporting public office holders, addressing misinformation regarding her investigative work, adding administrative monetary penalties for breach of the act, and harmonizing the Conflict of Interest Act and the members' code, most of which were very practical in nature.
Other witnesses also came forward and made similar recommendations. There were some that varied a bit. As a committee, we heard from a lot of good witnesses and a lot of good individuals who spoke to the different areas of the act that needed to be changed.
Members should keep in mind that some of the recommendations that we looked at came from the Oliphant commission, which was one of the predecessors to this bill being brought forward to Parliament. There were some leftover recommendations from the Oliphant commission that we did not even entertain at all.
One of the things in the act that was talked about was post-employment and cooling-off periods for members of Parliament, particularly members of cabinet and parliamentary secretaries, and how some of the rules around that needed to be tightened up and adjusted. However, we did not see any of that make it into the recommendations of this report.
The Canadian Bar Association came forward, and Mr. Guy Giorno, a Conservative himself, made some good recommendations around changes to the act on the different assets people have and disclose, and how these changes needed to be made as well.
Both the Canadian Bar Association and the commissioner recommended giving the commissioner the ability to impose administrative monetary penalities in the act. Right now the commissioner cannot impose any fines or administer any penalty if someone contravenes the act.
We heard a lot of this during the testimony, and we could have taken the opportunity to incorporate some of these things and make a meaningful document. My recommendation to the people who write legislation for the government is to dive into this report, see what was recommended, and see what people actually put forward as concrete suggestions in trying to modernize and update our conflict of interest legislation.
As I mentioned, this was a statutory review. It only comes around every five years, so when it comes, we have to look at some meaningful recommendations. I would not expect the government to take all the recommendations; I get that, but at least when making recommendations, the government should come back to what we heard and to some of the suggestions that were made.
It is disappointing that this report does not reflect the hard work of the committee. As I said, some of the witnesses had some very good suggestions, but they were completely ignored.
I do not think that this report has done Parliament any good. It has not managed to strengthen our conflict of interest legislation at all.
I wanted to make those few comments on this report. I and the Liberal Party will present a minority report in which we outline what I have spoken about here today.
