Information & Ethics committee  I'm not fully versed in the details of that case and the extent to what was given back, were they gifts or some other form of financial transaction.

Information & Ethics committee  It's not just the dollar amount that's relevant. Certainly that is a scale that is enough to raise eyebrows. The details of the transaction are going to affect whether it falls into the relevant subsection of the act.

Information & Ethics committee  Technically, the rightness of the decision is not relevant. I mean, it matters, but it doesn't negate the requirements.

Information & Ethics committee  I guess in the abstract that seems plausible to me. There may be questions that prime ministers and senior cabinet ministers get involved in, questions of the highest order, such as acts of war and things like that. It may well be that in the abstract, some of those are absolutel

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure I'm very well qualified to comment on that. I certainly have seen well-informed commentators on both sides, someone who said, no, this was a very, very central piece of public policy during the COVID-19 era and therefore the Prime Minister had to be involved, but I a

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly, this is the kind of situation where one of the standard difficulties for senior leaders and other kinds of decision-makers in organizations is the feeling of “My mission comes first: I've got to get this thing done.” Sometimes, or often, that is entirely well intention

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly had I been lucky enough to have my opinion asked for several months earlier than this, l probably would have told the Prime Minister that, yes, this is the kind of situation you want to keep more than an arm’s length from and in which you want to go to some lengths to d

Information & Ethics committee  I think the rules can always be made clearer. I'm not sure more rules are better. I think, in many kinds of situations in the private and public sectors, we find not so much that there weren't enough rules, but that people either didn't know how to apply the rules, or the culture

Information & Ethics committee  For corruption? Absolutely, they can be found in all kinds of places.

Information & Ethics committee  I think there's room to improve the Conflict of Interest Act but I haven't compared it internationally. It stands in need of some revision just on the face of it, without comparing it internationally.

Information & Ethics committee  Without being able to quote the Prime Minister directly, every individual under the act clearly has responsibilities to recuse himself when the decision at hand meets the relevant criteria. It complicates things a little that the act differentiates between family members and rela

Information & Ethics committee  Am I in favour of boondoggles? I think you're going to need to talk to a lawyer at some point about interpretation of legislation at that level, and about the differences in particular kinds of legal agreements. That's just beyond my expertise. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure I

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure that I have enough of a grasp of the details of the particular case to know whether that's an act of avoidance. All legislation requires interpretation, that much is clear, so there's no amount of written.... A classic problem with the relationship between ethics and

Information & Ethics committee  Without attaching myself to any particular description of what's gone on, we all know there's a very serious challenge quite generally worldwide when it comes to elected political leaders because they can't be censured in quite the same range of ways that we would in the public s

Information & Ethics committee  As soon as you're involved in the decision-making process or as soon as there's judgment to be made, you are in a conflict of interest. Again, the question then is, as I said in my presentation, so far, so good. So far there's nothing blameworthy. The question is, what do you d