Ministers, appointees should face stiffer sanctions for ethics breaches, says former commissioner

Public office holders who violate the ethics rules should face stiffer penal‐ ties, a former federal ethics commissioner told a parliamentary committee Thursday.

Testifying before the House of Commons ethics committee, Mario Dion ques‐ tioned whether the penalties under the Conflict of Interest Act are sufficient.

"I have expressed the view in the past that maybe the is‐ sue of penalties should be looked at," Dion told MPs. "There is an absence of direct penalty in relation to the act. It should be looked at in ter‐ ms of the credibility of the system. It would help if there was a possible sanction to be recommended by the com‐ missioner but to be imposed, potentially, by the House or by another upper authority."

The Conflict of Interest Act applies to more than 2,700 public office holders, such as cabinet ministers, their staff members and a wide range of appointees. Members of Parliament are governed by the Conflict of Interest Code.

Recently appointed ethics commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein said the most significant penalty for some‐ one who is found to have vio‐ lated the act is the fact that the violation is made public.

"The main penalty for breaching the act is that you basically get certified that your reputation is not what you are holding it up to be, that you don't understand your job and that you acted in conflict," von Finckenstein told the committee. "That's a pretty bad penalty for an elected official."

Von Finckenstein said he was only appointed recently as the full-time ethics com‐ missioner after serving as in‐ terim commissioner. While he has ideas about how the rules can be improved, he said he will express them later.

In January, von Fincken‐ stein appeared before the same committee to discuss Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's most recent vaca‐ tion to Jamaica, a free stay at a luxury resort that some have estimated was worth $84,000.

Von Finckenstein said the trip did not violate the ethics rules that govern travel and gifts because they make an exception for gifts from friends and family members and the owner of Prospect

Estate and Villas, Peter Green, was a long-time friend of the Trudeau family.

Asked about the trip Thursday by NDP ethics critic Matthew Green, von Fincken‐ stein said the act only covers actual conflicts of interest not apparent conflicts of in‐ terest.

"You're talking about the Jamaica trip. For instance, should there be a ceiling on gifts?" he said.

"Right now there is a com‐ plete exception for gifts from a friend. You can say, well, that's fine. But if the gift is too large it could create the wrong appearance and maybe we should have a monetary limit on it."

The comments came as the committee continued its study into the decision by the RCMP not to launch a crimi‐ nal investigation into the Trudeau government's han‐ dling of the SNC Lavalin af‐ fair.

In August 2019, Dion found that Trudeau violated section nine of the Conflict of Interest Act by pressuring then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to have prosecutors grant SNC Lavalin a deferred prosecu‐ tion agreement, also known as a remediation agreement, to settle criminal charges it faced - something that Wil‐ son-Raybould refused to do.

"I found that Mr. Trudeau used his position of authority over Ms. Wilson-Raybould to seek to influence, both di‐ rectly and indirectly, her deci‐ sion on whether she should overrule the director of pub‐ lic prosecutions' decision not to invite SNC-Lavalin to enter into negotiations towards a remediation agreement," Dion wrote at the time.

On Thursday, Dion re‐ counted how his investiga‐ tion was hampered by the re‐ fusal of Ian Shugart, clerk of the Privy Council, to let him view documents mentioned by witnesses that were con‐ sidered cabinet confidences. Dion said his office had been allowed to view cabinet docu‐ ments in the past and Shugart's refusal marked the first time in the history of the ethics commissioner's office that it had been refused ac‐ cess.

"There were several in‐ stances during my five years where ... lawyers who work at the office were able to gain access to cabinet confi‐ dences in a very practical, in‐ formal way," said Dion, who worked for a year in the Privy Council office in the unit that handles cabinet documents. "This was actually the first time that we were opposed with a written, 'No, you will not gain access to additional documents.'"

Dion said he contem‐ plated taking the govern‐ ment to Federal Court to gain access to the documents but concluded it would have taken three years and $2 mil‐ lion to fight the case.

Dion said that, in the end, he concluded he had enough evidence to proceed with his decision without them.

Dion said he was not sur‐ prised by the RCMP's deci‐ sion not to pursue a criminal investigation.