Happy Wednesday!
Not a lot from last week. Lots of debate around C-3 but not much else. We’ve got a Committee Report back on the Conflict of Interest Act that got some attention though, so we’ll be looking at that!
Committee Reports
ETHI 3 – Proposed Review of the Conflict of Interest Act
The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics (ETHI) was looking into whether or not the Conflict of Interest Act should be reviewed. They came back with the following findings:
- The Conflict of Interest Act, including the rules, disclosure mechanisms, and compliance measures in it, should be reviewed.
- ETHI should be designated to perform the review.
- ETHI should consider as part of its review if the Act should be amended or expanded to enhance transparency, prevent conflicts of interest, avoid potential or apparent conflicts of interest, regulate public office holders’ ownership of assets in tax havens, limit the availability of blind trusts as a compliance measure, extend the Act to include political party leaders and leadership candidates, and increasing penalties for non-compliance.
- That ETHI should report all findings and recommendations from this review to the House.
So yeah, they think that the Conflict of Interest Act needs to be reviewed. The bit about including party leaders and leadership candidates is likely in response to Carney becoming a party leader without having a seat first and the public view that he was able to hide assets from his disclosures.
Report Rejection – Michael Barrett (Conservative, Ontario, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes)
Michael has a soundbite motion here to send the report back to ETHI. You’ll see why I’m calling it that in a second. His motion reads:
That the third report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presented on Monday, September 22, 2025, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the committee for further consideration, with a view to assessing whether the scope of the review of the Conflict of Interest Act proposed by the committee should be amended in order to address better the concerns posed by the unprecedented extent of the Prime Minister’s corporate and shareholding interests, provided that, for the purposes of this order of reference:
- the following be ordered to appear as witnesses, separately, for at least two hours each, at dates and times to be fixed by the Chair of the committee, but no later than Friday, November 21, 2025,
- Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council and an administrator of the Prime Minister’s conflict of interest screen,
- Marc-André Blanchard, Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister and an administrator of the Prime Minister’s conflict of interest screen,
- Bruce Flatt, Chief Executive Officer of Brookfield Corporation and the Prime Minister’s immediate successor as Chair of the Board of Directors of Brookfield Asset Management Inc.,
- Connor Teskey, President of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and Chief Executive Officer of Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P.; and
- it be an instruction that the committee report back to the House by Friday, November 28, 2025.
So ETHI said that yes, we should review the Conflict of Interest Act in light of people who aren’t politicians taking public office. Michael’s response is wait, no, you guys didn’t look into how it applied in the case of someone who isn’t a politician taking public office before you made that decision. The only value in this Motion is for sound bites and clips for social media at the expense of delaying having ETHI improve the Conflict of Interest Act because now everyone has to waste time debating and voting on this Motion instead of moving ahead with the review.
This Motion was accepted with everyone but the Liberals voting in support.
| Party | For | Against | Paired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 0 | 163 | 3 |
| Conservative | 141 | 0 | 3 |
| Bloc Quebecois | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| NDP | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| Green | 0 | 1 | 0 |
The Report was then rejected with a similar vote split, the only change being that the Greens supported rejecting it.
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