Thursday, April 17, 2003

OTTAWA - Today, the nation-wide Government Ethics Coalition called on the Prime Minister and Cabinet to close the loopholes that would be left if the reports of the Senate and House committees were followed in creating a new ethics enforcement system.  If the loopholes are not closed, the Coalition does not believe that the new system will be strong enough to ensure honest, ethical government.

"MPs, and especially Senators, are recommending an ethics enforcement system with serious loopholes to protect themselves from accountability, instead of protecting the public interest," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch and Chairperson of the Government Ethics Coalition.

The Coalition supports the following recommendations made by both the House of Commons Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and the Senate Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament in their April 10, 2003 reports:

• that a code of conduct is needed that covers all MPs and Senators;
• that any ethics watchdog must be fully independent and impartial, and appointed with the involvement of all MPs and Senators; and
• that any ethics watchdog should have a longer than 5-year term (in order to allow for the development of expertise and experience).

• both committees do not want the public to have the right to file complaints with an ethics watchdog (COALITION’S RESPONSE: the public, as the employer of all politicians, must have the right to file ethics complaints);
• both committees do not want the ethics watchdog required to make all rulings (including advisory opinions) public (COALITION’S RESPONSE: all rulings must be made public so that all ethics standards are known by the public);
• both committees do not want the ethics watchdog to enforce the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct (COALITION’S RESPONSE: having more than one watchdog interpreting similar rules will result in conflicting ethics rulings);
• the Senate Committee wants a separate ethics code and a separate ethics watchdog appointed by and for the Senate, and are divided on giving that watchdog full legal powers (COALITION’S RESPONSE: such a watchdog would lack independence and having more than one code and watchdog would result in different (and likely conflicting) ethics standards for different politicians); and
• the Senate Committee does not want the public to have a right to appeal to court to review the decisions of an ethics watchdog ((COALITION’S RESPONSE: an appeal to court is an essential accountability measure for the watchdog).

• the codes for ministers, MPs, Senators, lobbyists and public servants should be changed into laws so they have greater force;
• there should be high fines as a penalty for breaking any of these ethics laws.
• the proposed new Ethics Commissioner should also be empowered to issue public advisory opinions and investigate and publicly rule on alleged violations of ethics rules by public servants (instead of senior public servants enforcing public service ethics rules); and
• the Ethics Commissioner should be given the power to protect public servant “whistleblowers” (replacing the current Public Integrity Officer who lacks key powers and does not make public rulings).

National surveys in the past decade have consistently shown that 80% of Canadians want strong ethics rules for politicians and public servants, and in May 2002, the Liberals' own polling firm reported that 45% of Canadians believe the Liberals are corrupt.  In a 1996 Supreme Court of Canada case about a public servant accused of an ethical breach, the Court stated: ". . . given the heavy trust and responsibility taken on by the holding of a public office or employ, it is appropriate that government officials are correspondingly held to codes of conduct which, for an ordinary person, would be quite severe."

Democracy Watch’s nation-wide, 30-member group Government Ethics Coalition will continue to push for stronger and more comprehensive measures to be included in the changes that are finally made to the federal ethics rules and the ethics enforcement system.