The fishing trip now has him on the hook in Ottawa for a host of possible political misdeeds and miscalculations. On top of that, a week of opposition catcalls got a boost Thursday from Parliament’s ethics watchdog, who said that some of MacKay’s activities might merit an investigation.
The latest problems emerged when the ethics commissioner Mary Dawson said it looked fishy that MacKay took a private vacation at the Burnt Rattle fishing camp, which is reportedly partly owned by the chairman of a Crown corporation that runs passenger and commercial ferries between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
“Do you see any potential (breach) with a minister of the Crown going to a luxury fishing lodge with a member of a Crown corporation board?” asked Liberal MP Scott Andrews at a meeting of the Commons ethics committee Thursday.
“Yeah, there could be contraventions in those areas,” said Dawson.
Suggestions of the potential ethical lapse flows from revelations last week that MacKay called on a search-and-rescue helicopter stationed a short distance away to pick him up from his remote vacation spot so that he could take a government jet to an announcement in London, Ont., in July 2010.
MacKay says he called on the crew of the Gander-based Cormorant chopper to perform a long-delayed demonstration, marrying his need for a ride with the air force’s desire to show its political boss some of their life-saving manoeuvres.
The ethics commissioner says she hasn’t identified any ethical breaches or even looked into reports that MacKay was vacationing as a guest of Rob Crosbie, the chair of Marine Atlantic’s board of directors.
She said under questioning that there would have to be “reasonable grounds of a specified provision that had been contravened” for her to preemptively open an investigation.
A member of Parliament could also ask her office to conduct an investigation, and the Liberals say they are looking into doing just that.
In an effort to head off any probe, MacKay told reporters he has instructed his staff to send Dawson “the personal cheque that I paid for a personal visit when I was with personal friends.”
That, he said, should be enough to silence her “public musings . . . about potential conflicts of interest.”
The focus on the defence minister and former deputy leader of the Conservative Party doesn’t stop there. Reports this week claimed that MacKay has been the government’s most frequent user of the defence department’s fleet of VIP Challenger jets, racking up almost 228 flying hours over the last four years at a cost of about $3 million.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to MacKay’s defence in the House of Commons, saying that all of the flights were taken while on government business. What’s more, he said, half of those trips were taken to meet the families of dead soldiers returning to CFB Trenton from Afghanistan.
“The minister uses the Challenger 70 per cent less than his predecessors and half the time he does that it is for repatriation ceremonies,” Harper said in the Commons.
Under the Conflict of Interest Act, federal public office holders must declare gifts from anyone other than family or friends with a value of $200 or more. They are also barred from accepting gifts or advantages “that might reasonably be seen to influence the exercise of one’s official duties.”
Crosbie has told the CBC that his family and the Mackays have been close friends for many years.
MacKay, the Conservatives’ regional minister for the province of Nova Scotia, was also the minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency until January 2010.
MacKay has made no declarations of gifts or other advantages that come with his position since October 2008, when he received two tickets from TD Canada Trust to attend a luncheon speech by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to the public registry for public office holders.
But he was fined $200 on Sept. 3, 2009 for failing to disclose his involvement as a director and officer for two of his father’s companies: Beaver Lumber Ltd and Lorne Resources, Ltd.
MacKay said that he had forgotten he was named as an officer with the companies, that he received no payments from them and that the whole matter was an “oversight” on his part.
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Source: Toronto Star
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