Ethics probe in Stephen Harper’s office prompts calls for tougher penalties

OTTAWA – A probe into a mining company’s efforts to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s top adviser has prompted new questions about whether it’s time to strengthen existing rules and consider fines to prevent conflicts of interest.

“The vast majority of people who do lobbying, follow the rules, but you want to make sure that in (alleged) conflict of interest and lobbying (cases), if rules are broken, then there’s a price to be paid,” said NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus in an interview Wednesday.

Angus made the comments after it emerged that Mary Dawson, the federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, launched an investigation into interactions between Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright and Barrick Gold Corp.

The media report alleged that Wright had personal relationships with officials from the company and that it was lobbying him in response to recent government foreign policies that may have harmed its business interests in Argentina.

Barrick Gold spokesman Andy Lloyd declined to comment Wednesday.

But Harper defended Wright, saying through a spokeswoman that the adviser “conducted himself properly and in accordance with the rules,” without taking part in any decisions that came after he was lobbied three times by the company in May.

Spokeswoman Julie Vaux also said that Wright did not have a personal or financial interest in Barrick Gold.

While she declined to explain how Harper would define having a personal link to a company, Vaux said that Barrick Gold was not mentioned in an “ethical wall” that Wright set up with Dawson’s office to avoid conflicts of interest regarding his leave of absence from a position as a managing director of Onex Corp, a Toronto-based investment firm.

But Dawson’s office told Postmedia News that the commissioner still had reasons for looking into Wright’s conversations with Barrick Gold in May, which were reported on the federal lobbying registry.

“A conflict of interest screen is put in place in anticipation of known instances or areas where a conflict of interest is most likely to arise, but not everything can be anticipated,” said Dawson’s spokeswoman Margot Booth. “The commissioner has the authority to investigate any potential contravention of the (Conflict of Interest) Act if she has reasonable grounds to believe that a contravention may have occurred.”

Angus said the case deserves to be investigated since he believes it raises questions about who has access to Harper’s office or the ability to influence government policy.

Liberal ethics critic Scott Andrews agreed that MPs should also consider strengthening Dawson’s office with new powers such as the ability to impose fines, a recommendation she recently made in an annual report submitted to Parliament.

“That’s something that we can talk about because there are no penalties,” said Andrews, an MP from Newfoundland and Labrador. “And with this particularly government, the ethics commissioner wrote several reports and no one even got a slap on the wrist, so maybe that’s where we can look at beefing up the conflict of interest (rules) and those guidelines.”

Harper’s office declined to answer a question about whether it supported the introduction of fines to discourage cases of conflict of interest.

But both Andrews and Angus suggested that Harper’s office should lead by example.

“You’d expect that within the office of the prime minister, they would understand the need not only to follow the rules, but to be seen following the rules very carefully,” said Angus, an Ontario MP.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Mike De Souza