Legislative Assembly of Ontario

CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST GUIDELINES

CONTENTS

Tuesday 11 June 1991

Conflict-of-interest guidelines

Adjournment

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Chair: White, Drummond (Durham Centre NDP)

Vice-Chair: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East NDP)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)

Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West L)

Fletcher, Derek (Guelph NDP)

Gigantes, Evelyn (Ottawa Centre NDP)

Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)

Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex NDP)

Mills, Gordon (Durham East NDP)

Poirier, Jean (Prescott and Russell L)

Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)

Winninger, David (London South NDP)

Substitution: Ward, Brad (Brantford NDP) for Mr Fletcher

Clerk: Freedman, Lisa

Staff: Swift, Susan, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1609 in committee room 1.

CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST GUIDELINES

Resuming consideration of the Premier's conflict-of-interest guidelines.

The Chair: I would like to call the proceedings to order. The first issue we have to deal with this afternoon is the question raised of whether the question should be put. All those in favour of the question being put please signify. Opposed?

Mr Sorbara: Can you just review with me, Mr Chairman, what you are doing here?

The Chair: Question.

Mr Sorbara: Is this another little closure motion?

The Chair: Moving right along we now have the question, which is Ms Gigantes's motion. Would it be helpful to have that motion read out again? Ms Gigantes, would you like to?

Mr Sorbara: Generally the Chair does that.

The Chair: I appreciate that. However, would that be helpful or should we just move on to the vote?

Interjections: Move on.

Mr Sorbara: They won the vote for closure?

The Chair: Just did, yes. All in favour of Ms Gigantes's motion?

Mr Sorbara: There is a 20-minute bell on this. No, if you are going to use closure --

Interjection: We did not use closure.

Interjection: No, not on this vote.

The Chair: We are voting. We are in the midst of voting.

Mr Sorbara: Hold on a second, would you, Mr Chairman?

The Chair: The question was put.

Mr Sorbara: So it shall be war between us.

The Chair: All in favour of Ms Gigantes's motion? Opposed?

Motion agreed to.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, could you explain to me the effect of Ms Gigantes's motion? We are discussing. We are looking for commentary. We are writing a report. What is the effect now of the passage of that motion on the writing of this report? Do those words become part of the report or what? Could you just explain that to me?

The Chair: I believe the intent of the motion was to request both that a change be made in legislation and that the mechanism of the administration of that change be the same as was earlier the case with the Members' Conflict of Interest Act, as passed in 1987, I believe it was.

Mr Sorbara: That would not be my interpretation of the motion. I think there is some confusion. My problem is that as I read Ms Gigantes's motion, it called for the integration of the guidelines into the Members' Conflict of Interest Act with the same mechanism for administration; that is, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner through a report to the House. I think that puts our researcher in a very difficult situation, because if you read the two acts they cannot simply be melded together like that.

Mr Winninger: Only one act.

Mr Sorbara: I will be glad to hear from you when I am done. A motion calling upon the government to present to Parliament a bill which would amend the conflict-of-interest act and provide, in effect, a new direction for it -- that is, the requirement for ministers to divest -- would probably have been an appropriate motion and would have answered the question that arises in the commentary. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. What happened is we passed a motion calling for something that simply cannot be done.

Mr Morrow: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: Excuse me if I am wrong, but did we not properly debate this and vote on this, so basically are we not discussing now something that has been voted on and duly dealt with?

The Chair: Are you suggesting that a continuation of this debate would be out of order as it is on an issue that has already been resolved?

Mr Morrow: Yes.

The Chair: You are right.

Mr Sorbara: What are we doing? We are in the midst of writing a report, sir, and we have just passed a motion which requires this committee to recommend the integration of one set of guidelines requiring the Premier to make judgements and decisions and requires certain things of his ministers with an act which has the commissioner do a set of very different things; that is, receive disclosure statements and make interpretations based on allegations of conflicts of interest.

Ms Gigantes: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I think it is essentially the same point of order as was raised earlier. What Mr Sorbara is suggesting is that we have somehow made a misstep here. He is suggesting that we have not answered the question to which we were addressing our minds, which is the question outlined on page 6 of the draft report.

The question, I will remind him, is "Guidelines or Legislation -- Political Versus Legal Accountability." The motion we passed addressed that question. I suggest we move on to part II of the report.

Mr Sorbara: I would agree with Ms Gigantes if her motion were simply recommending that this report contain a recommendation that the guidelines of the Premier be incorporated into legislation. That would have been fine. My difficulty is that the motion went on to suggest that the enforcement or administration of those guidelines be consistent with the Members' Conflict of Interest Act. Then it said, "ie, through report to the Legislature by the conflict commissioner."

That part of it is inconsistent with what the conflict-of-interest guidelines themselves say, which is that the responsibilities thereunder shall be in the hands of the Premier. Let's put the question to Ms Swift, if we can, if what this committee is going to be recommending makes sense to her. Mark, if you will wait a second and just try to understand the point I am making, maybe you can come up with the response and withdraw that motion and just have a motion simply saying --

Ms Gigantes: Not on your life.

Mr Sorbara: Okay, "Not on your life," she says.

The Chair: I think the member has a point and it has been recognized. I think the issue you bring forth, sir, is a very valid one. I hope it could be either incorporated in terms of changes or some of the input to other points in the report.

Interjections

Mr Sorbara: Mr White, how would you like it if I just finish the point and then perhaps we could have a discussion about it? I would prefer a discussion about it rather than just interjections or points or order. It is a real problem. I am not sure what you want to recommend.

Ms Gigantes: On the same point, all we are saying is that we had this discussion. Mr Sorbara may not have graced us with his presence for this discussion, but we had this discussion yesterday.

Mr Sorbara: I was here for virtually all of the day, my friend.

Ms Gigantes: We considered --

The Chair: But I have also ruled on a point of order.

Ms Gigantes: -- this very line of argument yesterday from Mr Harnick.

The Chair: Can we adjourn this discussion? The point of order has already been ruled on. We should move on to the next section, please, the issue of political versus legal accountability.

Ms Gigantes: Good. Part II.

Mr Sorbara: If we are going to do this by way of points of order, on a point of order, could I then find out from the committee, its Chair, its clerk, its researcher or any of its government members how this committee intends to blend, in the report and through recommendations, two very separate systems, one which has an enforcement mechanism through the Office of the Premier, and the other which has an enforcement mechanism through the commissioner? You cannot have both. The commissioner is an independent officer who reports to the Legislature. The Premier is a politician elected by the people and makes his decisions as to who is and is not in cabinet based on political considerations.

Ms Gigantes: On a point of order. We rehearsed this discussion yesterday.

The Chair: These are not points of order.

Ms Gigantes: Then I hope we will move forward.

The Chair: The issue Mr Sorbara raises is dealt with to some degree in the next section we are about to deal with.

Ms Gigantes: Was that not dealt with in our discussion yesterday?

Mr Sorbara: Could you reiterate your answers then, Evelyn?

Ms Gigantes: No, you can look in Hansard. We want to move on.

Mr Sorbara: Why? Are we so intractable on this that you cannot even tell me what your view is on that? I do not understand.

Ms Gigantes: Clearly, it is not your intent to finish a piece of work; it is ours.

Mr Sorbara: Am I going to get an answer from the researcher?

Ms Gigantes: No.

The Chair: Can we move on to the application of the guidelines or whatever we want to refer to them as? First off is the issue of the parliamentary assistants, the discussion, recommendation with regard to the application of guidelines to that group of people.

Ms Gigantes: Again, we had some limited discussion of this point last week. During the discussion of the subject, I indicated it was my strong feeling that parliamentary assistants should be covered by the guidelines. Parliamentary assistants are in a special place among members of the Legislature. As a result of their connection with ministerial work they have information not available to others. I think it is important that people feel they do not have interests which are going to be in conflict with that work and with the information to which they have access. So it would be my suggestion that the changes we are proposing should be extended to parliamentary assistants.

Mr Sorbara: I want to begin by saying that the guidelines are currently extended to parliamentary assistants. It has not seemed to have much effect on the conduct of parliamentary assistants. It has not had much effect on the willingness of the government members of this committee to have a substantive discussion of the matter. I raised a simple point that I was confused on, based on the last vote, which was taken by way of closure, and I think it is terribly unfortunate that this committee does not want to enter into a substantive discussion of it. I would move adjournment of today's proceedings.

Mrs Mathyssen: Mr Chairman --

Ms Gigantes: You cannot debate that.

Mrs Mathyssen: We have been discussing this --

Mr Sorbara: There is no debate. I have a motion on the floor. It is a 20-minute bell.

The Chair: There is no debate on a motion to adjourn. The motion has been made. There is a 20-minute bell on a motion to adjourn.

The committee recessed at 1620.

1640

The Chair: We are presently voting on Mr Sorbara's motion to adjourn. All in favour of adjournment, please signify. Opposed?

Motion negatived.

The Chair: Can we move on now to Part II, the bottom of page 8, the issue of whether parliamentary assistants should be included. Ms Gigantes has spoken to this already, and I believe Mr Sorbara has as well. Is there a motion in terms of recommendation?

Ms Gigantes: I wonder if there is a consensus that it should be applied to parliamentary assistants if applied to ministers.

Mr Sorbara: I think we have a little bit of difficulty here. For our party's part, we agree that the guidelines that apply to ministers in the main ought to apply to parliamentary assistants as well. However, I guess we do not have consensus, because the guidelines the government is suggesting ought to apply to ministers, which guidelines it suggests now should be put in the form of statute, we do not believe should apply to ministers, so we do not believe that they should apply to parliamentary assistants either.

The answer to the question, should guidelines apply to parliamentary assistants in the same fashion as they apply to ministers, is yes. Unfortunately we are talking about a different set of guidelines. So we would not favour --

Interjection.

Mr Sorbara: I am sorry, sir?

The Chair: Mr Sorbara still has the floor, Mr Mills.

Mr Mills: I was sort of thinking out loud, not arguing.

Mr Sorbara: Those are our comments on this section. I think some of the difficulties the government is going to find -- I guess maybe they do not even care. Hello, is anyone there?

Mr Mills: I am listening.

Mr Sorbara: Okay. If you get one, that is good.

Let me tell you the problem you are going to have if you take the position that the guidelines, as contained in the document submitted by the Premier of the province and which you want to put into legislation, should apply to parliamentary assistants as well.

Under the protocol adopted by the previous government, David Peterson -- you remember him then, the member for London Centre, and during that time Premier of Ontario -- decided he would use the office of parliamentary assistant as a sort of important experience or training ground for MPPs. So he decided that every year -- it did not matter how well you did or how poorly you did -- he would change the parliamentary assistants. One year you might be the parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General and the next year you would not be, but you might be the chairman of a committee or you might be nothing at all, and you might be appointed a minister of the crown.

He did not have that same regime for ministers. Once you were appointed minister, generally you stayed there unless you ran into a problem like Ms Gigantes ran into or Mrs Smith ran into in the previous administration or whatever. But generally, if you were a minister, you were a minister until for some reason there was a want of confidence in your ability.

I do not know what Bob Rae has planned, whether he plans on rotating parliamentary assistants or not. I thought it was a good idea, and I know that in my five and a half years as a minister, I worked with -- well, in some cases I had two ministries; in fact, for most of the time I had two ministries, so I would have two parliamentary assistants and they would change at the end of the year.

If Bob Rae decides to adopt that sort of system, and I think it was a pretty good system -- there is nothing political about it; he might want to do that -- what MPP in his right mind, if he has any business assets at all, would sell them in 60 days so that he could be parliamentary assistant for a year? Think about it.

I am not talking about a law practice that you can go in and out of with some facility and some flexibility. I am talking about a real going concern, let's say a car dealership that is doing well and making money. If you got in government, you might want to place that in trust, because obviously once you are down here, you are not going to get in the business of selling cars. But if you had a car dealership and Bob Rae called you into his office and said, "David, my boy, you are going to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health," and you said, "Oh my goodness, Premier, that's very generous of you," and you are only going to be it for a year, what you will have to go and do in 60 days is sell your car dealership. Get it on the market right now; get a quick sale. Remember, you cannot take back a mortgage, because that is an interest in the business, so you have to sell it for cash. You have to get completely out of it.

If this mythical MPP said, "Oh, that's a great deal," my God, I do not know if I would want him to be a parliamentary assistant in Ontario. He would have to be completely nuts to do that.

Mr Winninger: Are you saying we are out of our minds?

Mr Sorbara: David, what I am saying is that you are proposing right now -- and probably you are going to pass it -- that these same rules ought to apply to parliamentary assistants, and I will bet $20 that if that is proposed, none of you will vote against it, not even Gord Mills, who knows better.

If the Premier adopts a system that has you as a parliamentary assistant until you scandalize the public record or make an inadvertent accident, then maybe you would want to have the guidelines apply to parliamentary assistants. But maybe what you would want to do here in this committee -- and we will leave if you want us to leave -- is to have a discussion among yourselves as to whether you really want to apply those rules, or you might want to suggest to the Premier very gently, "Premier, if you are going to be switching us around every year, maybe it would be a little bit too much to ask us to sell our businesses."

It does not matter if you do not have a business. It does not matter if you are a teacher or a broadcaster or a lawyer or a nurse or a doctor. Poor Perruzza has to sell some two-bit interest in some two-bit piece of land up in King township. That is silly. Why does he?

Mr Winninger: I thought that was Mammoliti.

Mr Sorbara: No, that is Perruzza. Why does he have to do that, as if somehow he is going to abuse his office to enhance the value of his land? But he is a parliamentary assistant, you see.

Mr Mills: What about the hardship rule?

Mr Sorbara: Gord, you raise a good question, the hardship rule. I think that leaves it too much at the discretion of one person. I disagree with the hardship rule.

Think of the problem a Premier faces, and I will just use you as an example. Let's say he really wants you in cabinet. You represent an important riding, your political experience is good, but you have this problem that you have significant assets that the new law says cannot be placed in trust and away from you; you have to sell them. Right away, I think the Premier himself has a conflict of interest because he has to make a decision about hardship, and in doing that he really is going to think about how badly he wants you in cabinet. Greg Evans would not do that because Greg Evans is not making up the cabinet. That is why I disagree with the Premier setting out in the guidelines his ability to make an exemption based on hardship or whatever, so I would take that out completely, but you guys are going to be writing the report.

Ms Gigantes: On a point of order, Mr. Chair: I think what Mr Sorbara is doing is once again entering into argument on the previous question, which has been decided.

Mr Sorbara: Can I know under what standing order this point of order is taken?

Ms Gigantes: Yes. It is that you are being redundant in arguing --

Mr Sorbara: Is that a standing order?

Ms Gigantes: You are being redundant in arguing a matter which has already been discussed and decided. What you are attempting to raise is the issue of to whom and how the administration of the amended legislation would be responsible, and we have just decided that in the previous question. The question before us is, shall it apply to parliamentary assistants?

The Chair: Ms Gigantes, I think you are absolutely accurate that Mr Sorbara is being repetitive. However, he is being repetitive with regard to parliamentary assistants, not to the earlier question, and he does still have the floor.

Mr Sorbara: Do you know what? I am just not going to be interrupted over and over again on points of order. I am going to move that this committee adjourn and I am going to ask for a 20-minute bell. I am really serious about trying to make some points here. I do not mind a discussion, but I am not going to be interrupted, sir, every time I am trying to make a point.

You guys are going to write the report, okay? We have agreed on that. I am just trying to tell you, in a substantive way, the difficulty that you get into in respect of parliamentary assistants, and I was about to conclude my remarks. I can do so in 20-minutes' time if the vote is lost.

Ms Mathyssen: If we believed you were about to conclude, we would be candidates for swamp land. We have listened to this since February.

Mr Sorbara: My dear friend, you are a candidate from swamp land.

1650

The Chair: We have not had intervening business since the last adjournment call.

Mr Sorbara: We most certainly have. We have moved on to the next section.

The Chair: You, sir, had the floor at that point and we have not had intervening business. Your adjournment motion is out of order.

Mr Harnick: On a point of order, Mr. Chair: I think it is quite clear that intervening business is merely resuming the debate. Because the debate has been resumed, it would be in order to adjourn the debate or ask to adjourn the committee hearings for the day. I suppose Mr Sorbara, if he wanted, could adjourn the committee for the day as opposed to adjourning the debate.

Mr Winninger: Do you have some place you would rather be?

Mr Harnick: No, I am easy. I do not have any particular qualms about whether we adjourn or do not adjourn. But I think it was quite clear -- I guess it was over the month of May -- that the Speaker ruled numerous times that resuming the debate was in fact intervening business and accordingly that the motion would be in order.

I am sorry the chairman was not listening to my point of order, but what I was saying -- and I apologize for having to repeat it again -- was that the fact we resumed the debate has been ruled by the Speaker to be intervening business.

Mr Sorbara: And we actually moved to a different section.

Mr Harnick: We, I believe, adjourned last time when Mr Sorbara brought a motion prior to beginning the discussion about parliamentary assistants. We now resume the debate. He has made a speech about parliamentary assistants. That is now the intervening piece of business. I think the standing orders make it quite clear that he is now entitled either to adjourn the committee or to adjourn the debate. The Speaker has made that quite clear in the Legislature, and unless you can point to another section being the applicable section of the standing orders, I think his motion is in order.

Mr Mills: Where is he getting this?

Mr Harnick: I suppose he watched the House leader of our party do this for a month and it rubbed off on him.

The Chair: As you are aware, there were different adjournment motions. You have made that point in the earlier part of your point of order.

Mr Harnick: Before we argue further, perhaps we could take a moment and obtain a copy of the standing orders. Maybe that would answer the question.

Ms Gigantes: Could I make a suggestion? As there is a determination by opposition members that we shall adjourn for at least 20 minutes, we could use the 20 minutes to do precisely what has been suggested by Mr Harnick, which is to obtain a ruling or a recommendation from the Speaker's office and then, no matter what, come back in 20 minutes. At least we will have that advice with us.

Mr Harnick: The effect of all of this has been that we have wasted 30 minutes.

The Chair: If you wish to research the issue, perhaps what we could do is --

Mr Sorbara: Could the clerk help us out on this?

Clerk of the Committee: The only help that I can give you is that the Chair rules on motions.

Mr Sorbara: With the advice of a wise clerk.

The Chair: Which is what I was seeking. My apologies, Mr Harnick.

Mr Harnick: Do you have a copy of the standing orders?

The Chair: Do you wish to recess for a few minutes to consult those?

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chair, it was my motion and I had the floor, so I will withdraw the motion for the time being and continue my remarks on parliamentary assistants --

The Chair: Fine; thank you.

Mr Sorbara: -- much to the chagrin of my friend, the member for Ottawa Centre, who will probably find a way to intervene on some point of order or other. I just say to her that I was trying to make a substantive comment in respect of parliamentary assistants based on our experience as a government. You will probably include in the report a recommendation that parliamentary assistants be bound by the same guidelines. I am suggesting to you that this is bad public policy.

But above and beyond that, I think it is clear that there are many elements of bad public policy contained in the guidelines. I think that was apparent from the first, and it was a political exercise rather than an exercise of substance. Again, for my money, if you want good public policy, you will have a system of public disclosure that is second to none. We do not quite have that yet in the province, but I think we are going to get there. I think that one day public disclosure will actually include a requirement that a committee of our Legislature have the authority to call before it ministers of the crown to examine them periodically on their public disclosure document and their conduct as ministers in this general area of conflict of interest.

In fact, in the United States jurisdictions, and certainly in the federal US jurisdictions, the ratification process of senior ministers -- all ministers, I guess, but only some of them are high profile -- is probably where we are going. But you will notice that neither in the US nor in any other British parliamentary jurisdiction do we have this foolhardy suggestion that the ministers sell what they have and divest themselves of what they have so that they can serve at the pleasure of a leader.

I do not think we are going to get any farther on this committee. I do not think we are ever going to have a reasonable discussion. I do not think the government members of this committee are interested in listening to the opposition and to our experience, nor do I think they are interested in listening to the Tory members. I think we have a fundamental disagreement. I think your instructions are to support the notion of divestment, and to recommend to the government that it come back with a bill in that regard.

I do not think we are going to spend our time fruitfully here any more, so I am going to suggest that you folks prepare the report you want to prepare. We will have a look at it. I know our party is interested in submitting dissents on many of the sections that are contained in the document. We may combine our efforts with the third party; we may not. We have not decided that yet, but I, for one, do not want to play this any more.

I regret, to tell you the truth, that you are not interested in taking a broader view. The whole thrust of parliamentary democracies right now is for greater freedom of the representative. By the way, that is one of the things that Preston Manning is using in a magnificent way. It is catching fire all over the place. As we talk in our own party about the reforms we are going to be advocating, each of the leadership candidates is talking about how he would make Parliament different, giving MPPs greater freedom and independence to affect public policy.

The experience on this committee, and this is only my second bill in committee -- support and custody orders enforcement was one, and this is the second initiative in committee. I think it is too bad that we could not have had an independent kind of parliamentary approach to it, that the word is -- from David Agnew or from whomever -- that you will call for the guidelines as they were presented.

Mr Morrow: On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: The member across is assuming an awful lot by suggesting we have marching orders. He is also assuming we are not here listening. I cannot speak for the rest of my colleagues, or I possibly can. We are sitting here and we are listening. I really take personal offence at that.

Mr Sorbara: I am sorry my friend the member for Wentworth East takes personal offence. It is not meant to be personally offensive; it is a comment on the way in which we are doing business. I think it is too bad, but you have to understand my perspective. I just do not see any purpose at all in participating in a discussion of this report and the making of recommendations. We could go back and have witnesses. We could call witnesses from every single jurisdiction in the world, and if the overwhelming evidence was that these guidelines are ill-advised, it would not make a whit of difference. We only had one witness here.

Ms Gigantes: Does Mr Morrow have the floor?

The Chair: Mr Morrow raised a point of privilege.

Mr Sorbara: In any event, I am going on too long on this. I just simply suggest that you folks get on with the writing of the report and we will get on with the business of preparing a dissenting report. That probably will take us several days, and we would probably want a few days after the recommendations you come up with are in writing. We will have a look at those. We will get the document translated and we will get it submitted.

1700

Ms Gigantes: If I understand what the opposition is offering, it is that the government members of the committee indicate to our staff what recommendations would be made on the sections of the report which are still outstanding, and that report then would form the basis of the report of this committee. If opposition members disagreed with any point in that report, then they would prepare their dissents.

Mr Harnick: Certainly that would be the most productive way to proceed right now. We have gone through the items that were really the pith and substance of the conflict-of-interest guidelines. I do not think the balance of the items is going to change what has been decided up to now.

If we do proceed this way, I would expect that we would see your report within the next couple of weeks and thereafter we would be in a position to respond to it. Our reports would then be, I guess, tabled with the Clerk of the House when the Legislature resumes in September. Is my understanding correct or incorrect?

The Chair: I believe that in other committees, in dealing with other issues, such as 123 items, all three caucuses submit different recommendations, subcommittees deal with them, and then they are brought forth to the committee as a whole for final debate, with the potential of course of a dissenting report. So the preparation of differing recommendations is not at all --

Mr Mills: Novel.

The Chair: -- novel, no.

Mr Harnick: I did not mean to assume that we were talking about anything novel. What I am talking about is what we will be doing in this committee for the balance of the time until the House rises on 27 June.

Ms Gigantes: What the committee does after this, we can discuss afterwards, but what we have had as a suggestion is that the committee proceed by way of having the government members indicate to staff what decisions should be made on the questions in the draft report, that the report be drafted and that the members of the opposition then have a chance to prepare a dissent.

I am going to propose that it probably would not be necessary, in terms of the body of the report, to wait until there is a complete redraft if the members of the government could quickly indicate to members of the opposition what decisions we would recommend having in the major body of the report on those remaining items. That would give members of the opposition an indication of what points they might wish to raise in dissent, and it would mean that we would be able to report this matter out to the House relatively quickly, I would hope.

The Chair: Indeed it has been before the committee for a lengthy period of time.

Mr Harnick: I have some concern about that, only in the sense that the suggestion really precludes the opposition parties from considering the report before they have to make a determination about whether they wish to prepare a dissenting opinion. I think that in itself is unfair. I would like, certainly, to see the report. There may be many aspects I agree with and there may be many aspects I disagree with, but I cannot make the determination about how I would prepare a dissenting report until I have the opportunity to read the report that the researcher, Susan Swift, is going to prepare for the committee. I think it smacks of just being blatantly unfair to even suggest that we be in a position to write a dissenting opinion when we do not see what the majority opinion is going to hold.

Mr Sorbara: I was not suggesting any extraordinary procedure for this committee. If that was the impression the other members of the committee got from my comments, I am sorry for that. What I was suggesting was that from my perspective and the perspective of my party, there is not much use participating any more in this discussion of comment and recommendations on the report. It seems to us that the government has made up its mind about what it wants, that the suggestions we might bring, whether they are on parliamentary assistants or otherwise, are not going to be relevant to what recommendations are going to go in. I am saying that for our part we will just hightail it out of here, the government can write its report, we will have dissenting comments to make on a variety of elements of the report and then it will be tabled.

Whether that takes two more weeks or three more weeks, what I am trying to say is that it is not going to take much longer to complete the work on the report, at least if the comments from our party have anything to do with it, because they are futile. They do not get us anywhere. They do not move the process along. They just delay. You do not really want to do very much other than to say: "This is very good stuff. These guidelines are so good they should go in legislation. We think basically the Premier's office and the Premier's advisers on this matter had it right."

We say no, they did not have it right. We say that the balance of evidence before this committee and the evidence from jurisdictions around the world supports our view; it does not support your view. But maybe your view is a foretaste of the future, where we are going. I hope not. I hope we do not start excluding people from public office in the way Gregory Evans thinks these guidelines might do.

But for all of that, you won on 6 September and you have the right to insist that reports and recommendations be as you are ordered or as you want to have them. Maybe you really do believe in the recommendations you are going to make. That is fine. What I lament is that we could not have had a free-wheeling, rather independent discussion of these matters apart from the directions that our parties have given us. For my part, I have not even talked about this matter with our leader. I have no idea how he really feels about where we should be going on this. I just come here whenever the committee is meeting and I am in town. I thought we might be able to get somewhere on this one.

We did not get anywhere on the support and custody orders enforcement legislation. I guess that was okay. SCOE is not a bad bill. It has some bad elements and we tried to fix up those bad elements and we were unsuccessful. On this one, though, it is really outside the realm of public policy, because it affects the nature and quality of the Legislature itself. That is our body. It does not belong to any political party or any government and it certainly does not belong to the civil service or bureaucrats in the Ministry of the Attorney General. That is our body. We are fixing rules that affect our very lives.

My own impression is that notwithstanding that, we are very rigid and set in our ways about it. I confess I am set in my ways about divestment. I personally, as an MPP, could never serve in Bob Rae's cabinet. When I made that comment to him across the floor in the Legislature when he introduced this stuff, his answer was, "Precisely." I just took significant offence at that. My view is that notwithstanding that I happen to be affluent, notwithstanding that I have substantial business interests in my name that bring me resources that perhaps not everyone can afford in Ontario, I think I could still qualify, imperfect as I am, to sit in the Legislature.

I know one thing. You cannot sell, because there is no market. My friend the member for London South knows about that. He knows what minority interests in small companies mean. The purchase and sale of interest in those things are subject to very rigid rules controlled by the majority, and when the majority says, "I'm sorry, you are not allowed to sell your interest," that --

Ms Gigantes: On a point of order, Mr Chair: We are again rehearsing a debate which occurred and was decided yesterday and earlier today. If Mr Sorbara is going to contribute to our process in the committee in dealing with this matter, he will be very attentive to that.

The Chair: I will not disagree with you about the repetition of Mr Sorbara's comments. However, he has every right to repeat them if in reference to another point on our agenda.

Mr Sorbara: My friend the member for Ottawa Centre, notwithstanding that she has been a member of this Legislature for a number of years, should realize that it is inappropriate to interrupt a member on a point of order when there is no point of order. Under the circumstances, as I said last time, I just do not want that to happen any more and I am going to move that the committee rise and report. I am going to ask for a 20-minute bell and that is not debatable. So let's recess for 20 minutes.

The Chair: Mr Sorbara, the clerk informs me that there is no rise and report in committee.

Mr Sorbara: I will move then, sir, that the committee adjourn for the day. Is that okay? I ask for a 20-minute bell.

The committee recessed at 1712.

1729

The Chair: With the consent of all present, we are resuming with Mr Sorbara's adjournment motion. All in favour of Mr Sorbara's motion? Opposed?

Motion negatived.

Mr Sorbara: Lost another one.

If I can just repeat my remarks, maybe uninterrupted, but you never know, we were talking about parliamentary assistants. Now correct me if I am wrong, Mr Chairman, but the motion, or the approach of the government members is to include parliamentary assistants under the guidelines that will become law. I would recommend to the government, as they draft their report, that they might want to amend the commentary under the section on parliamentary assistants, because if they do not do that, it is going to look rather weird. I suggest that they read it. Maybe I will help them out; I will just read it to them:

"It was suggested that parliamentary assistants should be treated differently than cabinet ministers under the conflict-of-interest rules. Parliamentary assistants do not have access to the same kind of information and do not have the same degree of influence over decision-making as do members of the executive council. In addition, although there is no security of tenure for either parliamentary assistants or ministers, it was pointed out that parliamentary assistants may in some ways be even more vulnerable to losing their position. In the past they have been subject to a rotation program to foster experience among backbenchers. The combination of these factors makes identical treatment inappropriate."

If the recommendation following that is, "Therefore this committee recommends identical treatment," this committee, or at least its government members, will look rather foolish, which is perhaps the case; maybe not. But maybe they should ask the researcher, Ms Swift, either to strike that paragraph or rewrite it, or suggest there is some evidence before the committee somewhere, a little bit of evidence that parliamentary assistants ought to be included in here. That is one of the problems you get into by making motions that they be included without reading the information that is there.

My friend, the lawyer from London South, will know that in writing a legal judgement, the judge generally wants to make reference to the evidence that supports the conclusions of law that he gets into. What you have here is a commentary, that would support a recommendation that parliamentary assistants not be included in the guidelines, at least the guidelines respecting divestment.

Is there any indication yet from the government members that they would want either to amend this paragraph or change their minds about the recommendation? If I see an indication, Mr Chairman, I would certainly cede the floor, at least for a suggestion in that regard.

Seeing none, I will just complete my remarks by saying that this is probably the final example of a situation where there is not really much interest in hearing what we have to say. Although I did not recommend the adoption of a specific procedure to complete this business, for my part and my party's part, we will cede the territory. We will have a look at the document the government members come up with.

Once again, I really recommend that you deal with that parliamentary assistant section. It would be embarrassing for a reader to read that and then see, "Therefore, Ms Gigantes moves, seconded by Mr Mills, that parliamentary assistants be included." That would be embarrassing to the government. We, of course, would have a dissenting report that would support the conclusions suggested by the commentary.

In any event, we wish you well in your consideration of this matter. We are disappointed that you would not want to take a radical, a sort of independent "I was elected by the people in my riding to think independently" kind of approach on this subject. That will come. It has come to Preston Manning, and it will probably come to the New Democratic Party government in Ontario one of these days. It has not come to this committee yet, and that is unfortunate because we have had some matters of substance here.

The worry is that where we could have actually worked together -- for example, on support and custody order enforcement -- to make a few minor changes, that was not possible. It is not possible on this project, unfortunately. It might be possible on the Mortgages Act, but I doubt it. The Mortgages Act is coming up. It probably will not be possible on the advocacy bills that are coming forward and -- my heavens -- when we get into that real meaty stuff, that Sunday shopping stuff, finally we are going to get a common pause day. Hallelujah, brother. Praise the Lord. Close those stores. It is not going to be possible on that at all. If you think we have had difficult times here this far, wait until we get into Sunday shopping and you hear the storekeepers in Windsor and Sault Ste Marie and Kingston saying, "Please mind your business."

Mr Mills: Save that for another day.

Mr Sorbara: I will. I am talking about where the committee is going now, from this point. Where you are going on this matter is that you will write the report; we will have a look at it and we will consider some dissenting views. I am sure my colleagues in the third party will consider some dissenting views and we may even work together on that. We may set aside our partisan differences and the war of politics and actually say, "What do you think about this?" And they will say to us, "We think it should read like this but we're interested in your opinion."

Too bad it never happened here. We could have sent Bob Rae a document that could have added to his insight on these matters. Bob Rae has not moved one iota since 1986 when he wrote to the acting commissioner, John Black Aird, arguing for divestment in an eloquent letter he submitted to this committee, and those who were here at that time remember it. Five years later, having become the Premier of Ontario, he has not moved one iota. We could have helped him in that.

Whether these guidelines become law or not, they will embarrass Bob Rae further and further because he has put himself into the ultimate position of conflict, having to make a judicial decision -- remember hardship, Gord, you mentioned it -- on the basis of how badly he wants Gord Mills or Mark Morrow or Evelyn Gigantes in cabinet. If he really wants that person badly -- and that is the heart and soul of conflict, how badly you want it -- he made a terrible mistake putting himself in the position of judge and jury, selecting members for his own cabinet and making decisions on their behalf.

It is too bad, because we could have said that in this report. We could have said: "Premier, we understand that you want very high standards. That's good. The people want high standards as well. But think about removing yourself from the position of making the determination about hardship and whether or not it's a conflict. Think about vesting that in the commissioner and think again about this business of divestment, because you're sending a signal to a significant part of Ontario that they're not welcome even to consider public service in the role of a cabinet minister and, according to you folks, in the role of a parliamentary assistant.

We could have sent him a really good note from this committee, a good, substantial, political reflection on what he asked us to do. And do you know what? Believe it or not, I think Bob Rae would have appreciated it. When he testified before this committee, he gave us the reasons why he favoured divestment, but he really did indicate he was interested in the views -- independent views, I think -- of those of us who are elected to serve in this Parliament representing our constituents. I really believe he did that.

If we had taken a different course and really decided we were going to have a good, substantial discussion about this, we could have improved the laws of Ontario, not hugely, but at least in certain respects.

You will say, "Oh yes, but we want to do that; it's just that we differ on these things." Do you know how I know that is not the case? No government member of this committee has contacted me to discuss this stuff informally over a cup of coffee, not the whip, not the member for Ottawa Centre, who is now apparently carrying the marching orders, not the member for London South, not my good friend Mr Mills. No one has phoned and said, "Why don't we have a chat in a less formal context?"

Mr Winninger: You have been away, Greg. What do you expect?

Mr Sorbara: My friend mentions that I have been away. Everyone who wanted to contact me while I was away was able to contact me, and some of the things I was contacted about while I was away were rather important, but not as important as this.

1740

The Chair: Mr Sorbara, his comment was out of order and you really should not respond to it.

Mr Sorbara: No, but I enjoyed it none the less.

Those are the little signals. You will find as you get more experienced in this place that those little signals are important. Someone phones and says: "I'd like to get this project moving. Can we have a talk? Can we meet down in the cafeteria? Do you want to take a walk in the park and we'll discuss what we might be able to do, how we might be able to compromise on this project?"

It never happened to me on SCOE. I am the whip, by the way. No one called. I did not get the call; I did not hear the call; I never wrote the call, all that stuff. No one called to say, "I would like to discuss with you, Greg, what your party feels we could do on these conflict-of-interest guidelines."

Mr Winninger: The days of deals are over.

Mr Sorbara: I believe that one day government members of this committee will actually be so daring as to pick up the phone and say, "I'd like to speak with you about --

Mr Morrow: Did you call us, Greg?

Ms Mathyssen: He has called us lots of things.

Mr Sorbara: I hear voices, Mr Chairman. I do not know where they are coming from, but I do hear voices.

The Chair: Please continue, Mr Sorbara.

Mr Sorbara: The reason I do not call is because we are the minority. We do not have anything to do other than to wait to see what the government's position will be and then to try and encourage compromises. I would still be interested in some compromises or some fresh discussion on this, particularly on this one, because I really believed Bob Rae when he came here and suggested that he would like to hear some independent views on this stuff.

In 1986 he wrote a letter. He crystallized his position; his interest crystallized. My friend the lawyer will understand what I mean when I refer to the crystallization of an interest. Since that time he has not really done much thinking about it, and when he came unexpectedly to the office of the Premier, he was pretty much bound by that 1986 letter.

Have you gone through the documents lately? Bob Rae submitted a whole list of questions to us, generally in the area of conflict of interest. Do you know what? Not one of those questions has been discussed.

My own view is that there is not much left to discuss. We will be submitting some comments in dissent. If and when a bill comes back requiring that ministers divest themselves of their business interests within 60 days of being appointed to cabinet, we will oppose that measure. That will probably come back to the justice committee and we will have further discussions on that. I can tell you one thing. I am absolutely convinced in my view, in a non-partisan way, that our objection to that proposal is in the interest of good public policy.

I point out the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who the Premier wanted to kind of echo in his first few days in office -- he talked about reconstruction. He really was looking back to Roosevelt's plan for reconstruction out of the Depression. Bob Rae knows all this history and he wanted to use some of the same metaphors. Franklin Delano Roosevelt would not have qualified to sit in Bob Rae's cabinet, but Richard Nixon would have. Pierre Elliott Trudeau would not have been able to sit in Bob Rae's cabinet, but Joe Clark would have.

All I am saying is, reflect on it. As you craft the report, saying that if you want to qualify for Bob Rae's cabinet, you sell what you have and you are then beholden only to him, reflect on whether you really believe that is good public policy. We do not, and our dissent will express as much.

Mr Mills: I would just like to make one or two comments about this. I noticed that when this discussion commenced, Mr Sorbara went on about the rotating of the PAs to foster experience among the backbenchers and how this was part of the policy of the Liberal party. I can appreciate that. You had so many people you did not know what to do with them to keep them all happy. I do not know what is in Bob Rae's mind, whether I will be the PA to the Solicitor General next month or next week or two years hence --

Mr Carr: You will be Solicitor General, Gord.

Mr Harnick: You are going to be it.

Mr Mills: I am just saying I do not know that, but nevertheless I think that --

Mr Sorbara: He rotated PAs even when we only had 48 members in the 1985-87 period.

Mr Mills: I am just saying that in my limited knowledge of the last government, I thought the rotation of the PAs was really designed to keep everyone happy and not necessarily to give them experience. I noticed through the discussion, and I take exception to it, that there is a sort of vein running through here that people who come to this Legislature are superior if they have money or if they are business people or are of some affluence.

Mr Sorbara: My point is that they are not inferior.

Mr Mills: This vein runs through all the discussion. Mr Sorbara made a comment which I wrote down. He said that he had said to the Premier, "I could never sit in your cabinet," and Mr Rae had replied, "Precisely." Mr Sorbara said, "I took significant offence to that."

Mr Sorbara: Yes.

Mr Mills: Okay, I take significant offence to something you said. You said, sir, that these guidelines "are going to affect the substance, the nature and the quality of this House." I have not got a penny to my name, but I still like to think that I am making a contribution here, and I think that for you to say that the people who have not got money or have not got wealth or affluence --

Mr Sorbara: I say I can make a contribution too, but I for one do not qualify.

The Chair: Mr Sorbara, Mr Mills has the floor.

Mr Mills: That is the substance, that the nature and quality of this House is absolutely awful; it upsets me when people say that. So I look at myself and say, "Crumbs," you know. But I will get on with it. I think that in supporting this this document as it relates to parliamentary assistants, ultimately that decision, no matter who you are, depends upon you. If I have ten apartment blocks and I am in here and the Premier comes to me and says: "Gord, I want you to be the PA to so-and-so. What do you think about it?" I make that decision. I then have to say to myself, "What is my contribution to society through sitting in this House? Do I feel I want to make that contribution more than I want to own my houses?" All these things run through your mind. I think it is up to the individual to make that decision and it is not for us for say, "You will not qualify," or, "You do qualify for this position."

I would like to say in conclusion that I have great confidence in the Premier's statement of hardship. If I came into this House and was offered a position and could demonstrate very well to the Premier that I would like to be here and would like to do that, but that I own this and it will be a great hardship for me to divest this to be in his cabinet or to be a parliamentary assistant, I like to think the Premier would undertake a thorough investigation of that and accordingly make a decision in a humanitarian way.

Mr Sorbara: Like he did with Peter Kormos, for example.

Mr Mills: I do not have the connotation that it is sort of --

Interjections.

The Chair: Mr Mills does have the floor, please.

Mr Mills: I have absolutely no qualms about this. I think the underlying issue with all of us is credibility with the public, and right now it is zero. I must say to my friends across there that the tactics in the House added to that lack of credibility. It was just awful.

Mr Harnick: The Premier could have sent it out for hearings without going through all of that.

Mr Mills: I think guidelines such as these go a long way in getting back the confidence of the public that there are some criteria to being in this House. I fully support them and I thank you.

Mr Harnick: Just a few remarks: I agree in part with the concepts that Mr Mills discusses. I believe public perception is important and I think we here have lost sight of what that public perception really is directed to. That public perception is directed to making promises at election time and then fulfilling your promises if you are elected.

That to me is much more significant than the perception that one needs to divest to demonstrate to the public that we have honest people in this Legislature. We heard from numerous witnesses who came before us, and they were witnesses of different political stripes. I am referring to present cabinet ministers and to former cabinet ministers. Not one of them demonstrated, when asked, that there was any incident he could think of where the disclosure rules had not been effective. None of them indicated that anyone to their knowledge ever came to this Legislature and benefited and did things for personal gain. Certainly when one looks at perception, that to me is very significant.

At any rate, it is my understanding now that we will be completing our deliberations, such as they were, on this bill. We will be seeing the report that is prepared and we will thereafter, either in combination or individually, be preparing minority opinions on either all of what is in the final report or on various sections. That is now my understanding, that those minority reports will be prepared after we have had a chance to see the report that will be prepared by the committee itself.

I agree that we did not see eye to eye on the issue of whether there should be divestiture or whether there should not be, and it is regrettable to me. As a committee we made a decision and we decided and the majority ruled that there should be divestiture. Unfortunately, we left the section hanging. There was more good work we could have done once that decision was made. We could have looked at section 15 and we could have made certain recommendations so that the issue of hardship would have been clearer. We could have made recommendations about what the Premier's function would be and what the conflict commissioner's function could be.

We did not even have the opportunity in this committee, that I am aware of, to review the subsequent guidelines or the elaboration of the guidelines that the Premier issued to his cabinet and parliamentary assistants in February. We did not even have the opportunity to see how that impacted on this legislation, and I find that regrettable. I do not find it regrettable that we had philosophical differences. What I do find regrettable is that we were not able to go through the significant sections of these guidelines and make them better. There was never an attempt by this committee to direct ourselves to do that.

I find that regrettable because I too was under the impression that Premier Rae was genuinely interested in a detailed study of the contents of these guidelines. I felt, certainly from his appearance here, that he was prepared to consider many different points of view. Unfortunately, the report that will be prepared -- and obviously signed by the majority of government members -- is merely a recitation of headings, a fast summary and a motion that was put after each section, "Yes, we agree," or "No, we do not agree." I do not think that is what the Premier really intended us to do, and I think it is regrettable that is where this has been left.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Chair, I move that we adjourn now so that we can proceed to vote.

The Chair: The only thing I am wondering about is whether we are adjourning on this, or have you resolved to subsequently present dissenting reports?

Mr Sorbara: The bells are ringing.

The Chair: Five minutes. We are adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1755.