Monday, October 31, 1994

OTTAWA - In the wake of the Michel Dupuy affair, Democracy Watch today released a letter to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien calling for changes to the ethics enforcement regime. The letter criticizes the structure of the Ethics Counsellor position, claiming that it creates fundamental conflict of interests for the Prime Minister and the Ethics Counsellor that prevent the Ethics Counsellor from doing his job properly. The letter also criticizes the lack of clear investigation and enforcement powers for the Ethics Counsellor, and the lack of requirements for public disclosure of the results of investigations. In the letter, Democracy Watch calls on the Prime Minister and the Sub-committee reviewing Bill C-43, An Act to Amend the Lobbyists Registration Act, to ensure that the Ethics Counsellor position and powers are restructured before Bill C-43 is passed.

"The Dupuy affair has confirmed the predictions we made when the Liberal government released its lobbying reform and ethics package last June," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch, "The government has redefined 'governing with integrity' as whatever they do, and their ethics scheme is incomplete, unenforceable and rife with conflicts of interest."

"The Ethics Counsellor position is unethical itself. Howard Wilson has been put in the position of counselling Ministers on their conflicts of interest, while at the the same time he is supposed to be an independent investigator and enforcer of codes of conduct," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch, "He is wearing three conflicting hats at the same time." In addition, Howard Wilson is in a conflict of interest because he is a government-appointed top bureaucrat and he consulted with business associations and lobbyists on lobbying reforms. He is required, under Bill C-43, to develop a Lobbyists' Code of Conduct (after consulting with lobbyists) and to conduct investigations of violations of the lobbyists' code.

Although Mr. Wilson is supposed to investigate and enforce the codes, his powers as set out in the codes and Bill C-43 are very limited, as detailed in the letter. "In addition to being in a conflict of interest, the Ethics Counsellor is like a traffic cop who can't issue tickets without checking with the mayor," said Conacher, "and even if he gets permission he can only issue tickets for a few violations, in private, and the tickets can't be enforced."

"As the Dupuy affair shows, the Prime Minister has no incentive to allow the Ethics Counsellor to investigate because every scandal he reveals is potentially politically costly to the government," said Conacher, "In addition, none of what the Ethics Counsellor finds out is required to be made public."

When introducing the lobbying reforms and ethics package on June 16, 1994, Prime Minister Chrétien said that "integrity is more than just nice words or a photo-op, it is a way of life." And Industry Minister John Manley said that "our system depends on trust." But the government must first restore honesty and integrity to the system before Canadians will trust them again, and part of trusting government is knowing that the government has put in place effective mechanisms to check the power it holds and allow the public to hold it accountable to ethical standards as a "way of life".

The key question is who will guard the guard in this situation? What law enforces itself? "Without an effective enforcement mechanism, the government's integrity package is just nice words," said Conacher, "The Prime Minister may be ultimately accountable under the government's proposed system, but if conflicts of interest are not made public then Canadians won't be able to hold him accountable for anything."

In its report Spring Cleaning: A Model Lobbying Disclosure and Ethics Package for Those Hard to Reach Places in the Federal Government, released in May 1994, Democracy Watch proposed that the Ethics Counsellor position should be restructured as an Ethics Commission. In its letter to the Prime Minister, Democracy Watch requested that Bill C-43 and the Code be amended to resolve the problems outlined in the letter, in part by creating an independent (as promised in the Liberals' Red Book) and fully-empowered Ethics Commission.

"The government said that they could not find a high-profile outsider to fulfill the position of Ethics Counsellor, so instead they appointed a high-profile insider. Why didn't they consider the idea of a group of civic-minded Canadians acting as the watchdog on government ethics," said Conacher, "The appointment of an independent Ethics Commission would show that the government has integrity and is interested in rooting out corruption in government."