“What comes to mind here is that it will clearly be much easier for a person to make an allegation against a Senator when the information is completely accessible,” said Liberal Quebec Senator Serge Joyal in the Senate Oct. 4.
The Senate convened that day as a Committee of the Whole to discuss the appointment of Lyse Ricard as its new ethics officer and to pose questions to the veteran bureaucrat on her qualifications. Much of the question and answer session was taken up with questions about how Ms. Ricard intended to defend Senators against public criticisms.
“If the publicly-available information is misinterpreted and there are all kinds of media stories, another erroneous attack on the Senate or the institutions of the Senate or a Senator, would your office be proactive to correct that if it is an obvious mistake, or would that be the responsibility of the individual senator affected?” asked Liberal P.E.I. Senator Percy Downe.
In the past, some Senators’ motives have been called into question due to their involvements with certain companies. In 2011, the NDP accused Conservative Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin of conflict of interest when she voted on C-311, the New Democrats’ Climate Change Accountability Act. They alleged that since Sen. Wallin sat on the board of Oilsands Quest Inc. she should have withdrawn herself from debate and voting on the bill.
At the time, Senate ethics officer Jean Fournier ruled that Sen. Wallin was not in conflict because the bill was of general application, and did not specifically deal with the company.
Ms. Ricard was appointed on Oct. 4 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), after serving as interim ethics officer since April.
“Quite frankly, you are in charge, in part, of the reputation of each and every one of us in this chamber and of the institution itself in how you handle those inquiries. It will be very important at the end of the day,” Yukon Conservative Senator Daniel Lang told Ms. Ricard during her appearance.
Ms. Ricard downplayed the Senators’ concerns.
“Initially, my office and Senators’ offices may receive more calls and questions. As we saw when other information was made public, such as proactive disclosures and access to information, as soon as everyone has access to the same information, there will be less interest,” she said.
Ms. Ricard said that her office would not discuss an individual Senator’s file with someone who contacted her office.
“We never do that. We let the Senator know that someone phoned about their situation,” she said.
The move online responds to a longtime criticism of the Ethics Office that Senators’ disclosures, while public, were not easily available to Canadians and therefore not transparent enough.
As Senators file their annual disclosure statements with the office this fall—in which they list all their assets, sources of income, involvements with charities and corporate boards and substantial gifts— they will now be available online. A number of disclosures have already been posted on the Senate Ethics Office’s website.
Prior to this development, the public had to go to the Ethics Office, located on Sparks Street, which is one block from the Parliament Buildings in downtown Ottawa, to view the documents on site. The documents could also be faxed.
Saskatchewan Conservative Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who is vice-chair of the Senate’s Conflict of Interest for Senators Committee, said that while she doesn’t share her colleagues’ concern about moving online, she can understand them.
“I think that they want to be sure that they are providing information in such a form that is useful for the public. But they are worried that it could be misused by some people if they don’t understand what is there and what it says,” she said.
Ms. Ricard replaces founding officer Mr. Fournier, who retired March 31 after seven years in the post.
Prior to her appointment, Ms. Ricard spent 30 years in the public service, starting in the Auditor General’s Office in 1981 and taking her to the Public Service Commission, Public Works and Transport Canada. Trained as a chartered accountant, she also served at assistant auditor general under Sheila Fraser and assistant deputy minister of Citizenship and Immigration. She retired in the summer of 2011 from her post as deputy commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency.
Ms. Ricard is appointed on a part-time basis and is paid $770 to $910 a day, according to the order in the council. The ethics office is made up of the ethics officer and four employees: two ethics experts and two longtime Senate workers, according to Ms. Ricard, who noted that they all have secret clearance. The Senate’s Ethics Office’s annual budget is $807,000.
When a Senator makes a disclosure of sponsored travel, a gift or their annual disclosure of assets, it goes to an analyst who reviews the file, while the ethics officer makes any final decisions.
When the government announced Ms. Ricard’s appointment it also noted “this appointment does not change the government’s commitment to merge the positions of Senate ethics officer with the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner. Ms. Ricard’s position will be of value in the interim while this merge is being evaluated.”
Mary Dawson has been the House’s conflict of interest commissioner since 2007.
In response to an inquiry from The Hill Times about plans for merging the offices, and when it would take place, PMO press secretary Carle Vallée said, “it’s a developing plan.”
Sen. Andreychuk said that she is not privy to any discussions about consolidating the offices. She explained that at the time the office was created in 2004, it was important to Senators that their ethics office be distinct from the House of Commons’ commissioner.
Six amendments to the Conflict of Interest Code for Senators came into force Oct. 1. They are based on recommendations from Mr. Fournier and part of the code’s five-year review. The code’s last review was in 2008, and the Senate Conflict of Interest Committee completed the review a year early in spring 2012. It will be reviewed again in 2017.
While some amendments are technical, some aim for more transparency.
Reports of the Senate ethics officer will now be made public as soon as they are received by the Conflict of Interest Committee. If Ms. Ricard finds that a senator has breached the code, his or her name will be made public. If the Senator is found not to have done anything wrong, he or she could ask to have their name withheld from the report.
Before, inquiry reports went confidentially to the committee, who could then start their own investigation and write their own report to the Senate. The Senate Ethics Office’s report would then only be made public when the committee’s report is tabled.
Other changes include disclosing a Senator’s profession, employment or businesses directly on the forms, instead of having them indirectly disclosed as a listed source of income.
Now, all of a Senator’s income, assets and liabilities will be made public regardless of how relevant they are to their work in office. Previously, the Senate Ethics Officer would decide how relevant the information was before making it public.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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