Information & Ethics committee  What was behind my thinking at the time, to refer to what Mr. Tilson said just a while ago, was justice denied. It's the lack of immediacy that was in the act at the time, the ability to actually see something and not send it into some investigative process--as you know, the RCMP

Information & Ethics committee  There is no responsibility in the act, but my advice to all public office holders--to you, of course, because you've asked--is that there is a risk in dealing with an unregistered lobbyist. If someone is coming to you and they are clearly representing someone else's interests, or

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, and we're trying to make it as friendly as possible. Just last week we had some journalists in, doing a session to try to make it more searchable, more “Google-able”, if you will, because right now it's not as good as it should be. But yes, it's on the website. That's my a

Information & Ethics committee  First of all, let me thank you once again. As I said to Mr. Peterson earlier, in the rather odd situation I'm in of being a public servant who never talks to his minister, coming to these meetings is as close to being with my boss as I get. So I really appreciate the ability to c

Information & Ethics committee  The way I understand the machinery aspect of it is that it will be treated more like a department of government. It won't be like Mr. Shapiro's office, for example. It will go through the supplementary estimates and to Treasury Board for submissions. However, I guess what I'm v

Information & Ethics committee  Just to be clear, and to make sure that this is not an accountability issue, because I did inherit that interpretation bulletin--it's been around for quite some time--but I also didn't get rid of it, so this is my baby, I know there are others who have adopted it. So if it's a ba

Information & Ethics committee  Not that we're aware of. They may not have used the word “significant”, but that's kind of the way it happened. The others, for want of a way to describe this, I guess, said, “Well, the feds are doing it with 20%. I guess we'll do that too and see how it works out.”

Information & Ethics committee  And that some aggressive commissioner might want to review the next time the act comes around.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, may I try to take that on? Just to be clear, we're talking in the abstract here, without talking about any case.

Information & Ethics committee  First of all, as Mr. Bergen has pointed out, if the person hasn't registered and somebody is paying them, then there is a big problem there. That's covered in the act. The code of conduct applies to people who should have registered, even if they didn't. That's my interpretation

Information & Ethics committee  I do want to provide some hope in this scenario. While there are aspects that are outside my reach, there are those that are within it.

Information & Ethics committee  My recollection of what members were interested in pursuing with some vigour, and you've hit on a couple of them I think already--and I believe Mr. Tilson was in the chair at the time--one was the independence. There was no question about that, and Bill C-2 addresses that complet

Information & Ethics committee  I could speak to that. I initiated eight of them in October. We actually managed to hire our first investigator. As you recall, the office was at about three people last year. We managed to hire our first investigator in January, so it did take us a while to get rolling. We now

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely.