Harper failed to meet ethics czar on Grewal

[stignasty]

Harper failed to meet ethics czar on Grewal

By CAMPBELL CLARK

Thursday, January 26, 2006 Posted at 5:22 AM EST

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper failed to meet federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro despite repeated attempts over four months to interview him for an inquiry into the Gurmant Grewal affair, Mr. Shapiro noted in a report released yesterday.

Despite a code of conduct that says it is an MP's duty to co-operate with an inquiry by the commissioner, Mr. Harper's office told Mr. Shapiro he could not find time in his schedule to answer his questions between August and November of last year. Instead, Mr. Shapiro spoke to an aide.

[stignasty]

bump

[BubberMiley]

Funny they waited till after the election to make the announcement about Harper but the Libs get the RCMP investigation announcement right as the campaign was heating up.

[geoffrey]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

[tml12]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

Shapiro is way beyond pro-Liberal. He comes from the Montreal anglo/McGill University communitee that routinely gives Irwin Cotler approximately 80% of the vote in TMR.

I should add though that he was an EXCELLENT president of McGill...I liked what he did for the university and he should come back to the city if things don't get better over in Ottawa.

[Yaro]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

Which information are you talking about because the report that I read completely exhonerated Dosanj of any wrong doing.

[Wilber]

“Several times in the past year, the Ethics Commissioner has unfortunately chosen to protect public officials from accountability instead of properly enforcing federal ethics rules, while the Registrar of Lobbyists has refused to ensure a fair and impartial review of several ethics complaints some of which are five years old,” said Conacher. “As a result, Democracy Watch has concluded that, incredibly, laws against parking illegally are enforced more strictly and effectively than the ethics rules for the most powerful people in Canada, namely federal Cabinet ministers, their staff and Cabinet appointees.”

You mean this ethics commissioner?

[Shakeyhands]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

Shapiro is way beyond pro-Liberal. He comes from the Montreal anglo/McGill University communitee that routinely gives Irwin Cotler approximately 80% of the vote in TMR.

I should add though that he was an EXCELLENT president of McGill...I liked what he did for the university and he should come back to the city if things don't get better over in Ottawa.

Hahaha... so Harper didn't do what he is bound to do because Shapiro is Pro Liberal?

Give me a break. You are starting sound like a paranoid American conservative.

[Canuck E Stan]

Andrew Coyne's column in the Post today question's Shapiro's call on the Grewal case.Coyne feels that Dosanjh should have been slapped on the hand just as Shapiro did with Grewal.

The article in the Post is locked, but you can read it in Coyne's blog.

The Commissioner's selective ethics

First point: Mr. Shapiro did not vindicate Mr. Murphy, because he was not a subject of the inquiry, indeed “could not be.” This in itself is debatable. Under the Parliament of Canada Act, the commissioner is required “to administer any ethical principles, rules or obligations .. for public office holders,” including “a person, other than a public servant, who works on behalf of a minister of the Crown or a minister of state.” Mr. Shapiro instead preferred to rely on that section of the Act confining him to investigating “ministers of the Crown, ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries” for breaches of the Conflict of Interest Code.

How, when it is not even clear that he listened to the tapes. “[F]rom the outset of this inquiry,” he writes, “I wished to proceed on the basis of obtaining the direct testimony of all of the parties involved before deciding whether it would be necessary to rely on the tapes as primary evidence.” In the event, he “did not consider it necessary … to rely on the contents of the tapes in reaching my conclusions.”

Of course, we can’t be sure. But if Mr. Shapiro did listen to the tapes, he would have heard Mr. Dosanjh say, at one point, “you have to be able to say that I did not make a deal. That’s very important. That’s why these kinds of deals are not made in that fashion.” He would have heard him say at another that “nobody will make you totally blunt promises,” but that “if the chief of staff says that certain conduct ought to be rewarded in due time that trust is kept 99.9% of the time.”

He would have heard him say, “I’m sure rewards are there at some point, right. No one can forget such gestures but they require a certain degree of deniability.” And then he would have heard him laugh.

[Argus]

Harper failed to meet ethics czar on Grewal

By CAMPBELL CLARK

Thursday, January 26, 2006 Posted at 5:22 AM EST

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper failed to meet federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro despite repeated attempts over four months to interview him for an inquiry into the Gurmant Grewal affair, Mr. Shapiro noted in a report released yesterday.

Despite a code of conduct that says it is an MP's duty to co-operate with an inquiry by the commissioner, Mr. Harper's office told Mr. Shapiro he could not find time in his schedule to answer his questions between August and November of last year. Instead, Mr. Shapiro spoke to an aide.

Shapiro is history. No one cares what he has to say. He's been nothing but an excuse-maker for the Liberals from Day One, and his "investigations" already have the conclusions written before he talks to anyone. The Conservatives will put a real ethics commisioner in place, the first honest one the House has ever had.

[Argus]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

Shapiro is way beyond pro-Liberal. He comes from the Montreal anglo/McGill University communitee that routinely gives Irwin Cotler approximately 80% of the vote in TMR.

I should add though that he was an EXCELLENT president of McGill...I liked what he did for the university and he should come back to the city if things don't get better over in Ottawa.

Hahaha... so Harper didn't do what he is bound to do because Shapiro is Pro Liberal?

Give me a break. You are starting sound like a paranoid American conservative.

Like Ed Broadbent, who called for Shapiro to be fired?

[scribblet]

Actually the Herald has a leading headline today about how Shapiro held back info on Dosangj (or however you spell it, I'm too lazy to look it up, the ex-Health Minister guy). Apparently there was some sketchy stuff going on there, though whatever the case, it was equally damning to both parties so oh well.

Shapiro is way beyond pro-Liberal. He comes from the Montreal anglo/McGill University communitee that routinely gives Irwin Cotler approximately 80% of the vote in TMR.

I should add though that he was an EXCELLENT president of McGill...I liked what he did for the university and he should come back to the city if things don't get better over in Ottawa.

Hahaha... so Harper didn't do what he is bound to do because Shapiro is Pro Liberal?

Give me a break. You are starting sound like a paranoid American conservative.

Like Ed Broadbent, who called for Shapiro to be fired?

It might have been inapropriate for Grewal to make the tapes which wasn't illegal, but Shapiro was wrong in not castigating Dosanji. Shapiro said he based his ruling on information from other people, not from info. on the tapes. Gee, wonder why ?

Coyne has a good article on this: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/

The Commissioner's selective ethics

Andrew Coyne, National Post Published: Saturday, January 28, 2006

Give Bernard Shapiro, the Ethics Commissioner, credit for one thing: His inquiry into the Gurmant Grewal affair has established, as a general principle, that it is "an extremely serious breach" of the conflict of interest rules to offer any "reward or inducement" to a Member of Parliament in exchange for crossing the floor. Otherwise the report is a travesty from start to finish.

To read the report, you might come away thinking the only person who did anything wrong in the whole affair was Mr. Grewal himself: not the former health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, and not the former chief of staff to the prime minister, Tim Murphy, his negotiating partners for several long sessions last spring. Certainly that is how it is being spun: Mr. Dosanjh is now threatening legal action against unnamed persons, although allowing that he is in a mood for "forgiveness."

First point: Mr. Shapiro did not vindicate Mr. Murphy, because he was not a subject of the inquiry, indeed "could not be." This in itself is debatable. Under the Parliament of Canada Act, the commissioner is required "to administer any ethical principles, rules or obligations ... for public office holders," including "a person, other than a public servant, who works on behalf of a minister of the Crown or a minister of state." Mr. Shapiro instead preferred to rely on that section of the Act confining him to investigating "ministers of the Crown, ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries" for breaches of the Conflict of Interest Code.

Whether it is possible to "administer" the code as it applies to ministerial staff without the odd bit of "investigating" is I suppose a judgment call. Perhaps the law should be amended, Mr. Shapiro says, but "I am not in a position to unilaterally exceed my legislated mandate."

Fair enough. Except that's what he does for the rest of the report. Mr. Grewal is convicted of offences that appear nowhere in law, but which violate Mr. Shapiro's personal sense of what is "appropriate." Mr. Grewal's surreptitious taping of his conversations with Mr. Dosanjh and Mr. Murphy, he writes, "is neither an illegal act nor a contravention of a specific Rule of Conduct." However, "I believe such conduct is inconsistent with the Principles of the Code," notably that which requires members to "fulfill their public duties with honesty and uphold the highest standards so as to avoid real or apparent conflicts of interest."

]Again, fair enough -- except, why was the same standard not applied to Mr. Dosanjh? Mr. Shapiro finds that Mr. Dosanjh did not offer any "specific" reward to Mr. Grewal: the basis for Mr. Dosanjh's claims of vindication. Yet he also finds that the case "presents all parties to the events in an especially unattractive light," that "they at least appeared to have very little interest in principle," that they engaged in "a conversational dance in which each was trying to ascertain what, if anything, the other was offering." Yet only Mr. Grewal is held to account for this "inconsistency."

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