Monday, January 28, 2002

OTTAWA - Today, Democracy Watch detailed activities of federal Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson that raise questions about whether the Ethics Counsellor is complying with the requirements of the Lobbyists Registration Act (LRA) and fulfilling his official duties overall.

Democracy Watch questions the following activities of the Ethics Counsellor:

• none of the Ethics Counsellor's investigation reports in 2001 have been tabled in Parliament, as required under section 10.5 of the LRA;
• the Ethics Counsellor's Annual Report to Parliament for 2000-2001 concerning the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct claims that he has only three complaints filed during the year that were still to be ruled on, when in fact he has five outstanding complaints from 2000-2001;
• in addition to being poorly organized, the Ethics Counsellor's website does not include rulings he made in February 2000, April 2001, August 2001, and early November 2001, but does include a ruling he made in late November 2001 for a Senator who is not even covered by federal ethics rules.

In addition, the Ethics Counsellor still has an outstanding complaint from the 1999-2000 fiscal year about an alleged violation of the Lobbyists' Code, and the Ethics Counsellor publicly refused to investigate the new information he recently received about the activities of Alfonso Gagliano.

"Canadians have watched the Ethics Counsellor fail to uphold a high standard of ethics for politicians and lobbyists in his rulings, " said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch, "and it seems clear that the Ethics Counsellor is also failing to uphold a high standard in his own official duties."

Democracy Watch filed questions with the Office of the Ethics Counsellor about the above activities in November, but to date has not received a response as promised by the office.

In early December, Democracy Watch filed an application for judicial review of the lack of independence of the Ethics Counsellor, and of the Ethics Counsellor's November 6, 2001 ruling in which he found that no conflict of interest had been created when BCE Inc. gave the Prime Minister the gift of a golf game with Tiger Woods, a gift worth several thousand dollars.