Ethics commissioner calls for mandatory ethics training for all senior Liberals after new breach
The Fergus report is the second in three months where commissioner Mario Dion found a Liberal MP in breach of ethics laws
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OTTAWA — The Ethics Commissioner is calling on the Prime Minister to make all ministers and parliamentary secretaries receive ethics training after noticing a concerning “succession of mistakes” from senior government officials who keep breaking ethics laws.
“Over the last five years and on several occasions, I have observed senior officials being unaware of their obligations and mistakenly making assumptions,” commissioner Mario Dion said in a statement Tuesday.
“Offers to provide training and educational sessions on a variety of topics have been offered to all federal parties and to regulatees, yet we continue to see a succession of mistakes that are largely attributable to the inability to recognize the need to seek consultation,” he added.
His statement came on the same day Dion announced he would be leaving his post two years before the end of his mandate, citing “persistent health issues.”
It also came the same day he tabled a second report this year finding that Liberal MP and the prime minister’s own parliamentary secretary Greg Fergus broke ethics laws when he wrote a letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) pushing the quasi-judicial board to give a small television company mandatory carriage in Quebec.
The company, Natyf Inc., applied to the CRTC to be granted mandatory carriage in Quebec in 2020 and a year later, its director solicited support from Fergus as Chair of the Parliamentary Black Caucus. Receiving mandatory carriage can represent a significant windfall of revenue, particularly for smaller television channels.
In the summer of 2021, Fergus provided a letter in support of Natyf’s request to the company, which then submitted it to the CRTC as part of its application in September 2022.
But ethics laws clearly prohibit senior officials from exerting any form of influence or pressure on a tribunal, information that the commissioner has oft repeated in previous reports and public guidelines on its website.
In his report, Dion couldn’t help but note that as a veteran MP and parliamentary secretary, Fergus should have known he couldn’t try to influence the CRTC’s decision one way or another.
“As a parliamentary secretary since 2015 and having served for several years on both the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, Mr. Fergus should be well versed on the functioning of both regimes and the importance of consulting the Office,” Dion said in a statement.
“I am quite concerned that someone with the breadth of experience of Mr. Fergus would fail to recognize the possibility of a contravention.”
In an interview, Dion said the rule that ministers and parliamentary secretaries do not intervene in the work of a court of quasi-judicial tribunal goes back “decades and decades” and “goes back to Jean Charest” when he was a federal MP with the Brian Mulroney Progressive Conservatives.
In a statement, Fergus described his breach of the law as an “unintentional error” and said that his letter of support was meant to “ensure that Black Canadians see themselves reflected in Parliament.”
“In this instance, I fell short of what is required of me as a parliamentary secretary,” he said in his statement published on social media.
The Fergus report is the second in three months where Dion found a Liberal MP in breach of ethics laws.
In December, he published a report lambasting International Trade Minister Mary Ng for personally getting involved in handing out two contracts to a communications firm owned by her “close friend” and former Liberal staffer Amanda Alvaro.
“There is simply no excuse for contracting with a friend’s company,” Dion said at the time.
Last week, Ng told MPs at the House ethics committee that no one in her office raised a flag when she “participated” in awarding the two contracts to Alvaro, worth roughly $22,000 in total. She also said that it would be helpful going forward if the commissioner’s office offered “additional” ethics training to political staff.
But it already does, and only a “very small proportion” of MPs and their staff actually followed the office up on its offer, Dion said in an interview. That’s why he’s now suggesting the government make his training, which is available virtually, mandatory for MPs and ministers.
“It’s like riding a bike, you know. You have to actually spend a few hours trying to learn how to ride a bike before you can actually ride one,” he said.
“We’re not talking about five days, we’re not talking about two days, we’re talking about three or four hours,” he added. “The need is to stop, think, focus, and then figure out what needs to be done in order to protect yourself, make sure that you don’t get into trouble with the Conflict of Interest Act throughout your tenure.”
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