Thursday, January 29, 2004

OTTAWA - Today, one day after it was revealed that Canada Steamship Lines received $161 million from the federal government, Democracy Watch called on Prime Minister Paul Martin to show some integrity by reversing his weakening of ethics rules for Cabinet ministers, and by correcting serious flaws in the rules.

“Paul Martin has weakened Cabinet ethics rules so much that he will be allowed to participate in Cabinet discussions and vote on anything that affects shipping except a law called the Canada Steamship Lines Act,” said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch and Chairperson of the Government Ethics Coalition.  "With such weak rules, Martin and other ministers will not only be allowed to have financial interests in corporations, they will be allowed to vote on things that affect those corporations.”

As mentioned above, Martin introduced a new Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders in December, and weakened the rules in the Code by changing the definition of “private interest” so that ministers can vote on proposals that are of “general application” (s.4(1)).  In addition, Martin changed the definition of “public office holder” so that anyone who works less than 15 hours per week for a Cabinet minister will not be subject to the ethics enforcement system (s.4(1)).

In addition, Martin failed to include the new ethics rules introduced by Jean Chrétien in June 2002 in his Code, and failed to correct the following flaws in the Code that have been exposed in the past as allowing clearly unethical behaviour by Cabinet and other public officials covered by the Code:

• the Prime Minister will still decide whether he or other ministers or officials have broken the rules in the Code (s.24);
• complaints cannot be filed about violations of the 10 fundamental ethics principles in Part I of the Code (s.25), and the Code is not law (all provincial codes are laws);
• ministers will still be allowed to become lobbyists 2 years after they leave office, and ministerial staff will only have to wait 1 year before becoming lobbyists (s.30 - they should be required to wait 5 years, as in the U.S.); and
• receiving information about financial holdings will still be allowed under “venetian blind” management agreements (s.1 of the Schedule in the Code).