Information & Ethics committee  Do you mean in terms of the Ethics Commissioner's recommendations?

Information & Ethics committee  I apologize, but my French would have to be better; and so I am going to reply to you in English. One thing the Ethics Commissioner has recommended, and I'll say generally that we agree with all of the Ethics Commissioner's recommendations and you'll see the ones that the coalit

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for your patience. I welcome your questions. Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  Very well. I only have four or five points left. You need to increase disclosure of assets, lower the threshold, and strengthen the gift rules to make it clear that all gifts, if they create the appearance of a conflict of interest, must be refused. That includes deleting the lo

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify on one of the most important democratic good government laws that exists in any country, including in Canada, namely the Conflict of Interest Act. I welcome this opportunity, slightly overdue, for this five-year review of the ac

Information & Ethics committee  So now it's finally in force, and it has to be upheld.

Information & Ethics committee  Actually, I haven't said anything that you've attributed to me. I have said that the system would not catch anyone doing that. That's all I have said. I haven't said anyone is doing it; I haven't said anyone has the motive to do it. The system would not catch them. In terms of f

Information & Ethics committee  No: the fundamental issue is conflict of interest. We're trying to prevent conflicts of interest. We're trying to have ethical government that's open, and the system does not require open, ethical government right now. The commissioner is not doing audits, so it's very easy for a

Information & Ethics committee  I have never said it in the last 18 years.

Information & Ethics committee  You're inferring something that I have not implied.

Information & Ethics committee  The Federal Court of Appeal has already ruled unanimously on that and said that you have to prevent conflicts of interest. You don't have democratic good government if you don't. And when a lobbyist does something that causes the politician or public official to feel an obligatio

Information & Ethics committee  I have never said it.

Information & Ethics committee  The problem with this issue is that what's going on is secret, so everyone says it doesn't exist. There have been rumours in the past, for example, of corporations using retired executives who were no longer employees of the corporation to do their lobbying, so it didn't have to

Information & Ethics committee  I don't see any reason why. We have this thing called the Internet. It's searchable. It's very easy to upload stuff. There's no great burden to putting more information on the Internet.

Information & Ethics committee  You make it illegal. That's the best you can do. You will never end either secret donations or secret lobbying, no matter what regime you ever put in. You will always have Swiss bank accounts and bank accounts in other countries with secret money in them, and you will always have