Information & Ethics committee  It depends if we're looking at monetary penalties or—

Information & Ethics committee  We have had about 39 violations.

Information & Ethics committee  The 4,000 are for communications with public office holders and members of the House of Commons. Again, in there, I'm talking about communications generally. Some of these communications have a number of communications, so there can be a lot of back and forth, but I didn't go int

Information & Ethics committee  September.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Essentially, if there is a bill before the House or changes in legislation or if somebody is appearing in front of committee to make changes to legislation or a project bill, at that point in time we would determine that the organization could not provide you with a gift.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Exactly. Going back to the insurance brokers' association, a few years back members had come to us and asked, “Can we accept this gift?” because they all had received blankets or.... Actually it wasn't that case, it was that they were doing promotions—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  At that point we said they couldn't, the reason being that there was a piece of legislation they were pushing in the House in committee. We had said at that point that members sitting on that committee should not be accepting those gifts from the insurance brokers.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, if you're not sitting around the table, if you're not in the committee, that would—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The House is more general. It's all MPs, at which point we would say that it's more committee focused. Committee members cannot accept, but others can accept.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's important to review the documentation that comes with it. If there's a cover letter that asks for support on a bill or something like that, that is an indication the gift is most likely not acceptable.

Information & Ethics committee  There used to be three term positions in the advisory and compliance division, but the people left and the positions became vacant. Employees have since been appointed to these positions. Managing a large workload is always a challenge for a small organization. We hope the plan

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, I am pleased to appear before you today on behalf of Mary Dawson, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who regrets that she is unable to be here herself. I am joined by my colleague Peggy Koulaib, chief of procedures

Official Languages committee  I will let you answer because the act only applies to reporting public office holders, so they're not private companies.

Official Languages committee  That's right.

Official Languages committee  Thank you. For us, the real purpose of penalties assessed against reporting public office holders is to encourage compliance. Penalties are certainly a measure that the commissioner can use, but she genuinely believes in public transparency. In her opinion, a public report is th