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EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, December 4, 1995

.1944

[English]

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Milliken): Order.

We are continuing our study pursuant to the orders of reference adopted by the Senate on Wednesday, June 28, and by the House of Commons on Monday, June 19, to consider a code of conduct for senators and members of the House of Commons.

Tonight we have the honour of having Professor C.E.S. Franks, of the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University, to make a presentation to us.

Professor Franks has a written presentation that I think he'll give. Following that, I hope you will agree to open up for questions from hon. members. The floor is yours.

Dr. C.E.S. Franks (Department of Political Studies, Queen's University): I must say that I am talking with some trepidation tonight, because codes of ethic and codes of conduct are not something I have written about. I've read and thought about them, but I have not written about them. Being an academic, I never believe that I know what I'm saying unless I've written it out somewhere. So I thought it might be useful to toss out some thoughts and ideas that are as much about context as about the content of codes of ethics and hope that in your questions we might be able to get somewhere beyond where I am.

.1945

I'm not comfortable talking about political ethics, in a sense. When it gets to politics, in many aspects not only do I not know what's right and what's wrong but I often change my mind on what I do know. I do know also there's a profound distinction between things people consider acceptable or unacceptable and what's legal and illegal, and codes of conduct have to steer a very tricky line between those.

Political ethics is one of the most confusing areas in the study of democratic politics. It contains more than the usual mixture of prurient interest, evil being in the eye of the beholder, and easy, not to say simplistic, judgments about other people's behaviour. It's also an area in which there is often a ``do as I say'' not ``do as I do'' attitude, where both practice and moral stance change, depending on the situation, particularly whether government or opposition.

At the same time, Canadian politics has, since Confederation - and certainly before too - involved large dollops of patronage, some of which have been very questionable indeed. Codes of conduct must, if they are likely to be more than pious hopes, steer a middle ground between, on the one hand, being so bland as to be excessively permissive, and on the other, being so strict that they will inevitably be broken, bent, or ignored. In these remarks I will consider some of the important questions about codes of conduct for politicians in the Canadian context.

The first question is what kind of behaviour is at issue. If the average citizen were asked about the ethics of politicians, the issues raised might well focus, as often does the attention of the media, on the personal behaviour of politicians: how much they drink, their sexual proclivities, whether they smoke - even tobacco. These are the issues much reportage focuses on.

Social drinking appears to be acceptable, but any sexual behaviour apart from monogamous two-sex missionary position acts between consenting adults can arouse the ire of the press and harm political careers. North America appears to be unusual in the world on this score. In most countries, more of the private lives of politicians is left private, and there seems to be a greater tolerance of variety and minor peccadilloes. Profumo, after all, was brought down for lying to Parliament, not for lying with Christine Keeler. I often wonder what the reaction of the press would be if their private lives - that is, of the press - were subjected to the same public scrutiny and criticism as they inflict on politicians.

I assume the task of this committee is not to discuss this sort of private personal behaviour of politicians but to examine where the acts of politicians harm the public interest or are clearly against the law. Some activities might overlap both personal and the broader categories, such as the sexual harassment of employees, but these are not, I think, extremely difficult or contentious to resolve. Perhaps I'm wrong.

In the area where a code of conduct is more at issue, the problems are often defined as conflict of interest, as though a distinction can be drawn between what is in the public interest and what is in the personal interest of the politician. I find this a singularly unhelpful approach, not least because both the public interest and the personal interest are essentially contestable and find their meaning as much in the eye of the beholder as in objective measures. Besides, the distinction does not come to grips with behaviour that is reprehensible and should be sanctioned but is still arguably in the public interest. The kinds of activities a code of ethics should cover will, perforce, inevitably be loose and blurry at their boundaries.

Second, what is the role of the elected representative? When one considers codes of ethics, the two contrasting roles of the politician appear to be on the one hand that of the philosopher king removed from the pressing needs of interests and constituents and considering exclusively a broad abstract public interest, and on the other hand that of a fix-it manipulator with dirty hands, responding to pressures of constituents, friends, and interests by doling largesse out of the public purse through outright gifts, tax reductions, kindly regulations, jobs, contracts, and other benefits.

.1950

The media, in their criticisms of political behaviour, normally make the unarticulated assumption that politicians ought to act out the philosopher king role. Constituents and interests, in their direct interaction with politicians, often demand that the politician behave in the manipulator role.

Much of the so-called constituency work of Canadian MPs is little more than coercing favours out of the bureaucracy for constituents who are astute or fortunate enough to get the help of a member, hence vaulting ahead of their less fortunate compatriots. Where does the ability of MPs to assist particular individuals and groups progress to such a point that it transgresses the boundary between the acceptable and unacceptable?

Three, how should politicians be remunerated? It was only within the last century that the idea that elected representatives should be paid for their work became generally accepted. Until recently, the pay of Canadian MPs was termed an ``indemnity'', as though it was compensation for some form of punishment. Previously, service in Parliament was available to the already wealthy, to those who would be supported by the wealthy, and to those who could make a profit out of politics.

Even today, practice in remuneration varies widely around the world. American politicians are relatively well paid. In France the practice of cumul des mandats means that many politicians enjoy two, three, or even four salaries as elected representatives.

Canada is towards the low end of the spectrum in terms of remuneration. This is one of the factors leading to disgruntlement with political life and the rapid turnover of MPs.

In Britain there's a longstanding tradition of MPs' enjoying outside income. A high proportion of MPs are under retainers from lobbyists and interests, and their income from these sources, especially for Conservatives, often equals or exceeds their parliamentary remuneration.

In Canada the lotusland of financial rewards more often awaits the member when she or he retires from Parliament to a patronage position. Probably more than one-third of retiring MPs, from the government side in particular, enjoy this sort of benefit.

It would be clearly wrong if serving MPs enjoyed positions of emolument under the crown. Is it much less wrong that the expectation of such a reward governs behaviour, particularly loyalty to party, while serving in the House?

Four, what about campaign expenses? Too much has been written on this for me to add much. Increasingly the attitude seems to be that any campaign contributions beyond small individual donations are suspect and that political campaigns ought to be supported out of the public purse. Is this really the way in which to link politician with electorate?

Isn't there a good argument for claiming that politicians ought to represent groups and interests, whether business or labour or agricultural or environmental or whatever, and that campaign contributions are a respectable and desirable way of grounding a politician in political and economic reality?

Five, who benefits from political decisions? Where is the line here between ethical and unethical behaviour? A politician benefiting directly in the form of bribes for political activities is now generally regarded as being unethical. But does this apply to contributions or contributions to party? What about restrictions on the employment of spouses and family? When does this begin to intrude into the freedom of citizens?

Cronyism is another form of doubtful behaviour, but one that has a long tradition in Canada. As we proceed along this line from the particular to the general, the groups that benefit become increasingly less particular and more general, particularly businesses, groups of businesses or interests, sectors of the economy, constituencies or regions, ethnic and cultural groups, and social classes. At what point does behaviour cross that boundary between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the ethical and the unethical?

Six, can a distinction be made between the political and the bureaucratic spheres? The doctrine of ministerial responsibility, as it is often articulated in its most rigid form in Canada, suggests that no distinction between the political and the bureaucratic can be made. All decisions are political in the name of the minister, for which the minister is responsible and accountable in Parliament. Canada, in the developed western democracies, even those based on the Westminster model, is at the extreme end of the spectrum in refusing to make this distinction.

I believe this is a product of a long and continuing history of patronage in Canada and the use of patronage to bind the country together, to gain support for political parties, and to mobilize the support of the governed.

.1955

I also believe that much of the suspect behaviour of individual members takes place within the broader context of the common use and general acceptance of such behaviour by and within governments. If we are to be serious in our efforts to clarify the boundary between the ethical and the unethical, then a much clearer distinction must be drawn between the sphere where bureaucratic rules of impartiality and consistency reign and those where the political norms of inconsistency and particularism prevail.

I am not trying to suggest that bureaucratic is good and political bad. Each has its place, but for the distinction between ethical and unethical to be made properly, the distinction in practice where the differing sets of norms operate must be made much more formally and rigidly than at present.

How should a code of conduct be enforced? Transparency and accountability are the essential starting points here. Commissioners of ethics, parliamentary committees on ethics, etc., I believe should come second. At the same time I do not believe that transparency in itself will uncover or disclose serious malfeasance or excesses.

That's the end of my prepared remarks. I added in a page of my own notes on the subject from a British author. Just to give some facts, in 1991 384 MPs held over 500 directorships and 450 consultancies between them. Particularly well represented were the fur trade, tobacco industry, alcohol companies, and the drug companies. The average fee for consultancy was £10,000 per annum - that is, about $22,000 per year - substantially boosting the MP's annual salary of £31,687. The overwhelming majority of MPs holding outside financial interests are Conservative.

I just thought I'd toss that in to give you a sense of why some British MPs like life in the House and stay there so long.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Thank you very much for your assessment and analysis.

Before I turn to Mr. Boudria I'd like to ask you something. You ask how a code of conduct should be enforced. I presume that question means that you feel there should be a code. If I'm correct, what should be in the code? Should it start out with a series of general principles? If so, what types of principles should be there?

Dr. Franks: That bothers me. I'm not certain that you can create a code that works. I have not looked at this deeply enough to give you an answer. I think it's much easier for bureaucrats because in the public service there are the accepted norms of impartiality, consistency, neutrality, and all the other standards, where it's much easier to see a deviation from them.

If we take an MP in her or his own work, supposing that person firmly believes the fur trade ought to be supported and furthered, does that mean that person should not accept a trip sponsored by the fur trade to defend the fur trade in front of groups in Europe, for example? Does it mean that person should not accept some other help one way or the other in the job?

The British answer on this is that the MPs are perfectly entitled to do that. The two restrictions on them are that they must state their outside sources of income and that these are published in a register. Then there's a committee that overlooks this. The virtue of that approach of not trying to specify in detail is that it leaves it up to the public to make a judgment on the behaviour of MPs.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): My only point, though, is that your paper seems to presume that there should be a code for senators and for members of the House of Commons when you ask the question of how a code of conduct should be enforced. So you're asking and answering the enforcement question. Enforcement of what?

Dr. Franks: That's absolutely fair. What I should have said is if there were a code of conduct, how should it be enforced. I'm being very cautious on that.

.2000

I again must say that the more I look at this issue, the less I'm convinced that you can cover everything that needs to be covered in a code. What you need to have is some sort of standard and, as some call it, transparency. I'm not a strong believer in codes in these things.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Mr. Boudria.

Mr. Boudria (Glengarry - Prescott - Russell): Welcome, Professor Franks. I guess it's the second or third time you've been before parliamentary committees doing this kind of thing. Probably you and I are the deans in terms of the membership of this committee today and talking back and forth about the issue.

I just want to make maybe a few statements and get you to respond to them, if I may.

I'm one of those who believe there should be a code. We can argue about the content, but the rules we have now are dispersed. We have rules in the Parliament of Canada Act, our standing orders, and the Criminal Code. We have rules of acceptable behaviour for members of Parliament in terms of much of what has happened in rulings of previous committees in the past and the jurisprudence thereof, if I can use the term, and so on.

If they were together, without saying even if it's necessary for them to include all the rules to guide us, then at least the member could have one of these here and say that here's a lit bit of what you're not supposed to do.

There's at least some benefit in that, as opposed to saying that you might want to consult section 110 of the Criminal Code, maybe section 111, maybe a certain standing order, and maybe another section of the Parliament of Canada Act. By the way, if you ever sit in the Senate, it's a different section that applies to you. This is not a very good situation right now in terms of confusion.

That's the first proposition. I'll add to that. I'm one of those who think the rules should be at least somewhat different between public office holders and those who are not. That means, in other words, ministers and parliamentary secretaries in the parliamentary sense of public office holders, because our constituents consider all of us to be that, I guess. For instance, it may be okay for doctor so and so, MP, to conduct his medical practice on Saturday morning. But if doctor so and so is a cabinet minister, perhaps it is not.

Having said that, I would like to argue that perhaps there should be a different test in terms of what can be done in that regard.

Finally, it shouldn't go perhaps as far as the Bob Rae rules - I wonder if I should call it that - in Ontario. Those aren't the rules of the legislature, but the supplementary rules he had put on.

At the risk of naming someone, I remember the resignation of Ms Evelyn Gigantes from the cabinet. I could think of ten reasons why she shouldn't have been in cabinet, but that wasn't one of them. She helped a constituent when there was no personal gain for her, no vested financial interest, or no pecuniary benefit of any kind. To have to resign was just a little odd in terms of how rules work and how they're administered.

Having said all that, maybe I could invite you to react, if that's okay.

Dr. Franks: Should we trade places?

Mr. Boudria: No, I don't pretend to have the answers. I'm giving you some of my thoughts. You and I have been around this table before.

Dr. Franks: I warned you at the beginning that this is not an area in which I feel I have pushed the boundaries of knowledge further. I might immodestly claim to have done so in other areas. So I speak as somebody who has read other people's works and done some thinking about it.

You must appreciate that practice varies enormously, not just across the world, but within Canada. I know within my lifetime there were cabinet ministers in provincial governments who maintained a law practice they went back to on the weekends. I'm sure there were other cabinet ministers who had other professions in which they kept a hand.

I remember one person talking to me about a doctor who did that and who was also a minister. I would say I don't know if I'd want to be a patient of his, but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that he did maintain a practice while he did have an office in government.

.2005

This raises a problem, from my point of view, in that I can't say it's a known fact that there are these standards out there that are so obvious that we'd solve the problem if we only adhered to them. The standards vary enormously. Even without going into fascinating places like Italy and Russia and so on, just within Canada they are so varied as to be extraordinary.

I would make a distinction on your first comment. When you say there are rules now but they are dispersed, I would make a distinction between a code of conduct and a compilation of rules and statutes and so on. I would think that would be very useful, and it might even be a great job for you to ask the parliamentary counsel, the legislative counsel -

Mr. Boudria: But those rules are codified, not -

Dr. Franks: No, there's a difference between a compilation of rules and a codification. A codification is a distilling of these rules into an authoritative statement in the same way a charter of rights is effectively a codification of, perhaps you could argue, principles in common law. There are other ways of claiming they are a social contract and so on, but my way of looking at them is as something that emerges out of the body of the law. In the same way, the compilation does not have a code in it because it's simply a list of things. There is no statement of the overriding principles in there to which the others are subordinate. So I would make a distinction there. I would think a compilation would be very useful and an interpretation by some of the legal staff of the House of Commons would be very valuable there too.

On a different test for ministers, yes, there should be one, although that's a very recent thought too. Back in the 1950s, ministers would fiddle their stock portfolios depending on the business before cabinet on the day before or coming up that day. That simply happened.

Mr. Boudria: But surely, professor, you would agree with me that in 1995, measuring it by today's standards, that would not be appropriate.

Dr. Franks: I worry about that, but again I get this sense that sometimes we are asking our politicians to be so pure that it's unreasonable. No, I don't think a politician, somebody who is actively involved in making decisions on the use of public funds and public powers, should be directly involved in transactions that enable a direct personal advantage to be taken. On the other hand, should we also say that when they leave cabinet, members must have a two-year cooling off period before they can accept directorships in a corporation working in Canada, or be involved in a lobbying firm or a law firm that deals potentially with the Government of Canada or with companies having business with the Government of Canada? Are we only going to control the present without something going on to the future as well?

It seems to me that we might run into ritualistic activity whereby we maintain a terrible purity in some limited sphere and ignore everything else. I must say I am not totally convinced yet that politicians act, even if they are under a code of conduct, without a weather eye to what might happen in the future, although I'm not mentioning any names on that.

In other words, I agree there should be more strict rules for ministers, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Mr. Boudria: Not in itself.

Dr. Franks: No.

Your final part of this question was on strict rules and whether or not they could be overly strict. The answer there is yes, absolutely. There's no question about it.

One of the problems of regimes of control like this is that you start, as I say, to create a ritualistic activity that creates one body of purity, but that then means all the dirt goes into some other thing you aren't looking at. I've seen that happen time after time. It's one of the reasons I worry about being overly specific.

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Bear in mind that I've put this in the context of a question: Are we dealing with politicians as philosopher kings or as tribunes of the people or as representatives of interests? They're all three, of course.

But you must recall that the very Edmund Burke who made that noble statement about ``dealing in the conscience of the nation'' and everything else like that at another point said he had spent his time in Parliament scurrying around doing business for his constituencies. No task was too low for him. Everything they asked him to do he did. I'm sure that 75% of what he did in that capacity would fail the test of a code of conduct.

Again, I go back to that question that political parties ideally have their roots in some coalition of interests, concerns or classes in the country that represent some things as opposed to others. When you do get to the point where you go from that level of generalities to the very particular level of directly benefiting or of family benefiting or of friends benefiting, where are you going to make the cut-off? I don't know. I don't know if that helps you on that one.

Mr. Boudria: Yes, it helps a little bit. I'm just trying to get a better sense of how people feel about this. I've been asking many of our witnesses similar questions. Some weeks ago we had some of these people in the press before us who you referred to indirectly in your presentation. I asked them the same question: Should the same rules apply to everybody, whatever they are? They said yes. I asked if it is wrong for the local town doctor who's active in Parliament to practice on Saturday. They said no, that would be okay. I asked if it would be wrong if he were a minister. They said yes, it would, because he surely wouldn't have time and so on. I asked if they weren't answering the exact opposite of what they just told me. They answered they supposed they were. And things went around this way.

Let's say we decide to have rules of the kind we had in our last bill, which our committee proposed some years ago in the report of the select committee on Bill C-43. That was the name of it at the time. The rules were to cover a declaration of the interests a person had. Should that declaration of interest cover the assets quantitatively or qualitatively, or both? The proposal we had before was similar to the Ontario regime, where, regarding the official in question - call him the jurisconsult, the conflict commissioner - one would declare both; for example, 1,000 shares in Bell Canada. However, the declaration he or she would then make public - he or she being the commissioner - would just say shares of Bell Canada so as to protect the privacy to the limit it could, to ensure that people were not chased, threatened, were not put in situations whereby they could for instance be the victims of enlèvement. What's the word I'm thinking of in English? Kidnapping. On the other hand, the public interests would be served.

If the answer to that is yes, should it also apply to the spouse, given that, particularly in my own province of Ontario, the Family Law Act of some years ago pretty well says that the assets of one are the assets of the other. Should both be covered, and to what extent?

Dr. Franks: And how far down the line should you go?

Mr. Boudria: That's the next question I asked to same reporter. Thanks for reminding me. One of them said it should even cover children who are no longer living at home, and I told him to get real. How are you going to tell your 30-year-old son living in Vancouver that he must send you a list of his assets for you to display in public? He would just say ``That's nice, Dad, but how long have you felt like this?''

Dr. Franks: Or my 36-year-old son who lives in La Jolla.

I worry about it, as I say, because nowhere have I seen how you can draw a clean line. And that's why I call them essentially contestable. The borders are blurry in there. If we're going to do this for politicians, why don't we do it for civil servants, for all members of boards and commissions and for all judges?

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Mr. Boudria: Category E office-holders right now do have rules that apply to them. They're slightly different ones from category B under the code, or the blue book you refer to right now.

Dr. Franks: I simply don't know where and how you draw the line on this when you get going, and your question is a very good one.

In Britain my understanding is that if you own shares in a company, that's not an interest in the sense that it's understood politically. If you are a director of a company, or if you are under retainer from a company, that is an interest. The way in which it affects the behaviour of an MP is that MP, if debating in Parliament, would stand up at the beginning and say he has an interest in this issue and then that MP would go on. Most of the time when they express an interest it doesn't even prevent them from voting. But it does not apply to private property owned. It applies to boards of directors and retainers.

I worry about this, and I'm sounding very retrograde in it. But supposing you said to your journalists that not only must they make a public declaration - and every member of the editorial board of their newspaper - of what private property they own and make that available, but also, every year they must make public a list of every group that has given them money for speaking or for other services. There are a lot of journalists who get a couple of thousand dollars for giving a talk to a business association some evening, and so on.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): What would you have this committee of parliamentarians do? Where would you like to see this committee go?

Mr. Boudria: We could make a deal with the journalists. It's tempting.

Dr. Franks: You're between a rock and a hard place there, because what you have to do is come to some answer on things in which there's no agreement on what the principles are that should govern it.

I think Mr. Boudria's suggestion of a compilation of existing statutes and rules and regulations is a marvellous starting point. I would also think inviting some of the legal counsel to write some sort of an analysis of what's in there and what that means to MPs and senators would be a very useful thing to do.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): As Mr. Boudria said to you before, that's getting pretty close to being a code.

Dr. Franks: Well, it's not, because it's not authoritative. It's simply a legal interpretation, which other legal interpretations might disagree with.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Were it to go before both houses in the form of a resolution, it might assume the air of being authoritative.

Dr. Franks: Well, I'm not thinking of something that did that, because a compilation of what already exists doesn't need a resolution of the House to say that it exists. It exists as laws or decisions of speakers and courts.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): One of the problems Mr. Boudria didn't go into, but he has with other witnesses, is that some of these laws we have now are terribly inconsistent.

The language is worn and archaic. It doesn't apply to present-day situations, and there are gaping holes. So we have to bring the thing up to date, modernize it. We have to state something that is for the future. We have to have some rules for disclosure, so that the public can know. So we can't just have our writers write something based upon the existing rules and regulations and orders of the houses. It wouldn't work.

Dr. Franks: I don't believe you can count -

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): I'm sorry, Senator Spivak has a question.

Senator Spivak (Manitoba): I'm very curious about your British example. When these people are taking money for a consultancy, is it just that they're supposed to observe what goes on - they are not supposed to be advocates?

Dr. Franks: They have a two-way relationship.

Senator Spivak: They're not like the Bloc Québécois, who are representing the interests of Quebec in Parliament, but not vice versa.

Dr. Franks: They advocate as well. One description of them is eyes and ears.

There is general agreement that on the Sunday opening of stores, for example, the members of Parliament who were under retainers from the shopkeepers associations opposed to Sunday openings helped to swing the decision against Sunday openings.

Senator Spivak: That was seen as perfectly okay.

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The reason I ask this is because I presume that members of Parliament are there to represent the public interest - whatever that means, but not.... I find this a very strange concept.

Dr. Franks: If I were being argumentative with a class I would say there is no such thing as a public interest, that there are different views on the public interest. If you have an MP who is representing an association opposed to Sunday openings, how can we say that the MP's views on Sunday openings don't represent her views of the public interest as well as the views of the association?

Senator Spivak: Let's take a clearer example. Let's take tobacco companies, and the idea that MPs might be consultants for tobacco companies when we know that issues of advertising and so forth are detrimental to the public interest. I don't think there can be any question about that.

Dr. Franks: The British live with it by having a register - which is published - of MPs' interests. That's the transparency principle.

There is a much longer obvious tradition in England of MPs representing interests. In the 19th century, up until the 1860s or so, the bulk of the business before the House of Commons was private bills - not private members, but private bills dealing with railways, canal companies, corporations, firms, and other things where an act of Parliament was needed to expunge some kinds of rights to assert the rights of some identifiable group or business. The point I'm trying to make is that MPs openly and clearly advocated those private interests and there never seemed to be any conflict there.

Senator Spivak: You seem to think this is not such a bad idea, or I'm not sure what you think about it. But if you were to look at it one step further, and suppose these people are doing a wonderful job.... Suppose I, as a member of Parliament, did a terrific job of representing whatever interests were paying me to represent them, and then they gave me campaign funds. That, it seems to me, would eventually end up being very undemocratic. I'm surprised it's not in England, because only people who had money to support campaigns of people who were clearly seen as representing that interest would have their views properly represented in Parliament, and the rest of the people would be sort of out to lunch.

I only raise this in the context that you seem to be taking a very laissez-faire attitude to a code of conduct. I think I agree with you only to the extent that it is impossible to legislate honesty, but I think it's possible structurally to place people out of harm's way or make certain things clearly illegal. From that point of view, it seems to me that a code of conduct or other things such as election financing rules - which I would think would be probably more beneficial than anything else to a system of integrity in Parliament - are a good thing. But you're taking the other position. You're saying let's recognize reality, let's understand that members of Parliament are just human beings and they can represent private interests. I'm not sure if I've exactly got you right.

Dr. Franks: Let me go back to my original distinction between the role of the representative as philosopher king and the role of the representative as representing interests. There's nothing -

Senator Spivak: Is that the only option?

Dr. Franks: No, there are others, as I say.

Senator Spivak: Philosopher king could hardly be something I would attach to members of Parliament or senators.

Dr. Franks: I think this is the issue we're getting at. If I hear a politician say to me that they are acting in the public interest, my first question is what do they mean by public interest. It doesn't mean some abstract, generalized thing, except in rare instances - and perhaps tobacco is one of them - where you can say it doesn't -

Senator Spivak: Just a minute. Let me attempt a definition. I also said I didn't know what it meant. After all, lots of people can pay to protect their interests. Large corporations have very adequate defence mechanisms, but the average guy out in the street doesn't. He doesn't even know what's about to hit him coming down the road.

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My assumption is that members of Parliament who are knowledgeable in the kinds of legislation and the kinds of forces that are at work economically and so forth are there to represent exactly those people - the people who have no idea of what's happening and cannot pay to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of economic and legislative forces.

Dr. Franks: That's a very legitimate viewpoint, and that is the role of tribune of the people, which I mentioned as well.

I do want to offer the thought that politicians disembodied from specific groups and specific constituencies and specific people with specific concerns are, in my view, a very dangerous thing. When I think back on bad governments in Canada, the ones I would begin my list with are governments that didn't expect to be re-elected and didn't give a damn. I could list three, but in the interest of politeness I will not do so.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): I don't want you to tell us; I'm going to move to Mr. Richardson and then to Mr. Epp, please.

Mr. Richardson (Perth - Wellington - Waterloo): Certainly I liked your presentation; it had a little sparkle in it, a little bit of a twinkle of the eye, and I like that. There were a lot of good things. I just wondered, I didn't hear you represent that we accept Hammurabi's code, or Morse code, or a code of honour, or some series of codes on the table that we could sort out.

The perception of politicians is certainly not one that is glowing, although when I was a young person it didn't have a bad taste. I don't know if it's because of one rogue or two rogues or three rogues or the press having to make news - and bad news makes good news for them.

Going back to representation and interest, it just seems natural. It's just a natural forum for interest. Take the agriculture committee in the House of Commons. I don't see too many people from Bay Street sitting on that committee, or too many people from downtown Montreal. It tends to have the people who have an interest in agriculture, many of them farmers and working farmers, developing legislation in their own interest, not contrary to the general interest of Canada but in the interest of what they know well and probably have an abiding interest in, both philosophically and pecuniarily.

May I say the same thing applies to the committee on natural resources. Many of the members of Parliament from northern Ontario and Alberta sit on that committee, with vested interests in mining, forestry, and oil. They will say they are representative of their constituency and therefore they are taking their vote to Parliament to represent that interest. I think that interest is well known by everyone around the table. I don't see it as a conflict of interest. We're always hearing that we should be consulting with and representing our constituents. I hear this day in, day out, and you see it it in action here. It's a natural gravitation of one's skills and background to sit on a committee and make a contribution, hopefully in the best interest of the country.

I had a recent look at the British situation. There is more than one direction on theirs and they don't pull them all together in one code. They're sitting there all through their operation. The Americans have a much stricter approach to it. There is a tendency now for us to look more at the American style than the British style, which I personally prefer, but everyone around the table has a different opinion on that.

We don't know where to go on this. We've heard from various people. As Don Boudria mentioned, we had two journalists who took absolutely black and white positions. One said no, this shouldn't be a code, and the other said definitely this would be something that would show the public you were being honourable and there was a code by which you could be measured.

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Good students don't always turn out to be successful or to do things the way you want them to do, because they may have been born with tremendous brains but they are short on judgment. They don't always go together. The same thing goes for politicians.

I don't know the answer either. If you could throw something out, if I'm wrong here.... It just seems to be people grab on to what they know best.

Dr. Franks: Well, there's nothing the matter with that. Again, it gets back to a point I made to begin with. The public interest is contestable. It means different things to different people.

The way we work out a public interest in practice in Canada is the aggregation of interests and views through the processes within government and through the parliamentary processes and the electoral processes, to come up with a medley of views, which very often are inconsistent with each other. There's nothing the matter with that. Values conflict on this.

I really worry when we assume we can create abstract standards that are so clear that every act can be measured against them unequivocally, because it can't. That's where I keep emphasizing that one of the roles of Parliament is to represent interests.

One of the problems in Canada - the Canadian Parliament has been mentioned many times - is that the interests that by and large tend to get represented in it tend to be on the more advantaged side of the scale rather than the less. The traditional criticism of North American politics in general is that the absence of a mass left-wing party creates a skewing in the political processes which is damaging in general. The whole range of interests isn't represented. But you don't resolve that problem through a code of conduct. You resolve it through political action and activity.

So I'm very leery of this assumption, if there is such a thing, that a code of conduct is going to eliminate interests and create activities in the public interest. I think you're dead on in your point there. There's a huge literature on that, which I don't need to go into.

The concern again, to get back to something that I said earlier and that you strike a chord with, is that the standard by which the press seems to evaluate political activity is that of the philosopher king - in other words, some person who is disembodied and doesn't have roots in interests and a constituency, who is concerned with the general public interest. Then if they do anything that deviates from that ideal role, something is wrong.

I'm not trying to defend dirty politics or patronage here. I think there are some terrible excesses in it in Canada. What I am trying to say is there seems to me to be a very glib assumption that you can always tell right from wrong in these things and that you can codify them.

May I jump off in the direction here, Senator, just for a jiff?

Mr. Richardson, let me draw your attention to one more thing in my remarks. When I say that in Canada the system makes less of a distinction, formally and institutionally, between what is bureaucratic and what is political than any other western system I know of, I mean that. What I am saying there is that the particularism of politics, which it seems to me is the focus of codes of ethics and codes of conduct, extends way down into bureaucratic activity. I now have a thick file of clippings from over the last year of stories of the Prime Minister's Office or the offices of other ministers, saying this person gets that contract, or this company gets that thing, or this has to go there, this way or that way.

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In most systems there is a formal institutional protection between the civil service and the politicians to prevent that sort of thing from happening. What I'm trying to say is that to the extent that happens within the broader structure of Canadians politics, patronage in all its forms, the MPs are pretty powerless generally, and they get pretty slim pickings out of the whole thing.

Again, I know this doesn't help you with the code of ethics thing, not one bit, but if I were looking for a main source for the problem, the executive is the one I would deal with first, not the question of ministers declaring what they or their spouses own but in terms of the intrusion of the ministerial decision-making into the bureaucratic sphere. I think that's the real problem. That's the source of a lot of it.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Mr. Richardson, is that it?

Mr. Richardson: I wish to go on.

There is a level that is bureaucratic, and I was a witness to some of it in my lifetime, and that is where there are many contracts given out in the federal government. When people reach the ceiling at age 55, or less in certain departments, they walk out, hang up their blue suit, put on a grey suit and come back and say, I'm the XYZ company, and I have a widget I want to sell you. You and George shared an office for the past six or seven years, and you take him out to dinner and make your sale. I feel that often in Ottawa there are as many deals made among old chums who worked in a department as there are through political interference.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): CIDA contracts and others like that, where they have the old boys network.

Dr. Franks: My understanding of this is that in many areas now there is that cooling off period that I described, which does help reduce it.

Just to add another thought, if you think that's bad in Canada, you should see the United States. It's impressive there. It really is. I'm awed by it sometimes.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Mr. Epp, please. Thanks for being patient. We always look out for the Reform.

Mr. Epp (Elk Island): No problem.

Professor Franks, a phrase came to my mind while you were talking. Don't be offended by it. I was thinking of trying to nail jello to the wall, because you seem to say there's no point in having a code, that we'd never get it down. In your preamble you made statements such as, you can't really have a code that means anything. You're very ill-defined, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of that. Is that because you only want us to think about it, or is it because you actually believe it? I know you're a professor and your business is to stimulate independent thinking. Do you actually believe this doesn't matter or that it can't be nailed down?

Dr. Franks: I think a lot of it cannot be nailed down. I seriously believe that.

I do believe you can have a code and principles of accountability and transparency that are useful. I don't believe they will either prevent or uncover major malfeasances and excesses because they will be concealed. What they will do in many instances is give guidelines to people.

Mr. Epp: But if you had a guideline or a code that said this is wrong, even though an individual may escape by hiding it, does that not still give the Canadian people an advantage in that if it is found out, they now know specifically that this individual has broken a rule? Is that not an advantage?

Dr. Franks: I'm not convinced that all the time you would know whether or not somebody had broken a rule. Supposing a member of Parliament is invited by a foreign government to visit another country and some of the expenses are paid for that visit. I don't know whether or not that falls under a code of conduct.

The point of accountability and transparency is that it's there for somebody to look at and comment on.

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Mr. Epp: Let's take that as an example. You could have individual private businesses sponsoring MPs or other people who might have a good friendship with a minister in a particular area. They could give him a trip to some exotic place at this time of the year. If that business person then asked the MP to perhaps assist in putting in a good word to the minister for this thing, surely you must agree that that's unethical. Just accepting that trip and then putting yourself under that obligation surely is unethical.

Dr. Franks: Is it unethical when a stock broker does it? Is it unethical if a businessman does it for another businessman?

Mr. Epp: Yes.

Dr. Franks: Is it unethical if it's done for a journalist?

Mr. Epp: Yes.

Dr. Franks: Why are you picking on MPs?

Mr. Epp: I'm not.

Dr. Franks: They're the ones for whom you want a code of conduct.

Mr. Epp: I'm saying that it's unethical. It's unethical to be influenced by money and gifts in such a way that it turns around as an advantage.

Dr. Franks: Even if I agreed that it was unethical now, I would still want to make a further distinction. This is a very jello type of distinction, and I hope you'll forgive me for being jello-ish on this.

If something is unethical, does that mean that it's illegal or should be illegal?

Mr. Epp: There are a lot of things in our country that are currently legal that are still unethical.

Dr. Franks: I would certainly agree with you on that. The question I'm trying to ask you is, is the criterion you're dealing with here unethical? I ask this because governments do many things that I think are unethical. I'm not going to name examples, because it's irrelevant.

Mr. Epp: Our tax system, for example?

Dr. Franks: You have said it. But it's not illegal.

Again, this is the part of the thing that bothers me in this: we all have different moral standards, yet what we're trying to do here is apply a standard to MPs and to senators that isn't necessarily grounded in the law and might simply be a standard of offensiveness rather than harm.

Mr. Epp: Why do you think we're here?

Dr. Franks: In an ideal sense, not in a personal gratification sense, I think members of Parliament have at least two functions. One function is to represent the people who elect them - I'm talking about members of Parliament, not senators - and another is to represent a public interest insofar as his or her convictions lead him or her. But there are the two functions and often they are fighting.

Mr. Epp: And if a member fails to fulfil those functions, should he or she in some way be held accountable for that?

Dr. Franks: They are. That's what elections are for.

I remember Gordon Fairweather saying very clearly that the majority of his constituents favoured capital punishment but he didn't and that his constituents knew his view and he knew theirs and that they had agreed to live together. That seems to be a very good example of where the member's conception of the public interest ran counter to the constituents' yet they agreed to re-elect him. But you could find something working in the other way too.

Mr. Epp: On page 2 of your presentation - I underlined this because I said to myself, when I get up, I'm going to ask this man what he means here - you say, ``...as though a distinction can be drawn between what is in the public interest and in the personal interest of the politician''. If a politician uses his or her position in a way that quite blatantly and directly benefits him or her, say, financially, and that is at the taxpayers' expense, is there not a fairly clear demarcation there between what's in the public interest and what's in the personal interest of the politician?

Dr. Franks: Suppose the government says to a member of Parliament ``We want to free your seat, so we're going to make you an ambassador to Ruritania'', and the man or woman says ``Say, that's a great idea. I'll take it.'' That's operating in personal interest, it's operating in the interest of party, and it might even be in the public interest too, depending on the MP. But is it unethical?

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Mr. Epp: It's too bad Mr. Gauthier isn't here today, because he's one who has somehow benefited the public by being moved from one position to another.

Dr. Franks: I wouldn't want to say anything like that.

Mr. Epp: You wouldn't want to judge it, but isn't that exactly the type of thing the public takes exception to? Don't you agree that this is why the Liberal Party in the last election and our party included in our documentation, our platform, that we were going to clean up patronage appointments, because the public objects to it and therefore that type of thing is not in the public interest if it's done?

Dr. Franks: There are many things of virtue in the Reform Party platform, but I won't list them because I know the praise would embarrass you and that wouldn't be fair. But there's something else that goes on in here. I worry about simplistic thinking. We're getting a bit away from codes of conduct, but it's an issue that underlies it, that at the heart of politics are conflicts of value.

I remember somebody saying to me the other day they were just getting into a discussion on the golden rule. We all believe in that. I do not believe the golden rule instructs people on whether they should be free market capitalists or socialists. I think the golden rule leaves a choice between those, that you can love your neighbour as yourself and be a capitalist believing in the free market or a socialist believing in a strong role for government.

Mr. Epp: I agree.

Dr. Franks: However, politics is an argument between them, and if you have a socialist government they're going to say that some things the market does are not in the public interest. If you have a market capitalist government, they're going to say that the kinds of things socialist governments do are not in the public interest. That's what I mean by a conflict of values in here. Those also appear in the codes of ethics.

I'm not trying to say that there aren't things that are clearly wrong, because there are. I think taking bribes is clearly wrong.

Mr. Epp: That's currently covered.

Dr. Franks: Yes, but when you get to a lot of these things it's blurred.

To refer back to what I said about how attitudes change when you move from one side of the House to the other, it's very easy in the opposition to distinguish right from wrong, and that's because the opposition is, in effect, powerless. It's what I call the victim mode, the victim sense. Victims are the only innocents in this world because they have no power, so they are pure. That's one of the reasons everybody wants to be a victim, because they can be pure. But once you start exercising power you have to make choices in situations of conflicting values and moral ambiguity and that clarity and purity is lost. Once that clarity and purity is lost, you have differing views of what's in the public interest.

Again, I would draw your attention to a member of Parliament who has a personal belief that freedom of personal action involves riding a motorcycle without a helmet on and having an unlicensed gun and smoking cigars. Another MP might say this is violating three-fourths of public interest all at the same time. It's not that easy. If you are having a code of ethics, I think its central point has to be things that are clearly illegal.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): We have the Criminal Code that does that.

Mr. Epp: It seems to me, though, that in our democratic system we have collectively agreed that the final authority on what is acceptable is the majority of the voters, the electors. We accept that in terms of selecting who represents us in the Commons. We don't have that choice in the Senate currently, which is one of these things where some of us differ. But whether it comes to socialism or blatant unbridled private enterprise, we submit that to the people. We ask them which model they think will best serve our country, and they will elect the government of the day.

The people are telling us very clearly that they have had it up to here with politicians using their positions for their own benefit. Because political parties, especially the two most notable ones in the present Parliament, promised during the electon campaign to do something about it, it follows that they have an obligation to fulfil these promises and take the necessary steps to rebuild public trust in their institutions. That is the mandate of this particular committee. It's almost formally how it's given.

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In a way I share your anxiety about hoping the code will just solve everything. I don't believe it will. But I do believe that we should be able to codify at least those basics the majority of Canadians clearly agree upon and that we then make that into a set of enforceable rules parliamentarians will obey. How do you respond to that?

Dr. Franks: I think there are some central things, including those in the Criminal Code, that clearly we're all agreed on. I don't know the extent to which there is general agreement that support to individual politicians in the form of trips or something like that or in the form of other rewards and so on are reprehensible. I'm not sure if there is. That's where the issues of transparency and accountability become important, because the argument is that if you simply have a visibility of these things the public can make its own judgment on them.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Could I just read a couple of principles to you to ask if you would not agree that these would fit into the kinds of categories Mr. Epp is talking about? Listen to this, for instance:

Would you not agree with that as a principle for politicians in Canada?

Listen to the next one:

Would you not agree that these are the kinds of principles we politicians and parliamentarians should have, and that they should govern our conduct?

Dr. Franks: I would like all politicians and all professors and all bureaucrats to operate by those standards, and many others too. I'm not convinced that stating them gets you too far.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): It's a standard against which people can bounce their conduct.

Dr. Franks: But they're not objective standards. They're subjective ones. You start off on the first one where you talk about highest ethical standards. Is that public ethics or private ethics?

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): So that public confidence, trust, and integrity -

Dr. Franks: But the ethics in that doesn't say public ethics, it just says -

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Highest ethical standards.

Dr. Franks: Some people consider drinking alcohol immoral and unethical.

A voice: And smoking.

Dr. Franks: As I say, we have an obsession with sexual behaviour in North America. Are they things that fit under that ethical standard? Do we say the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation but the nation has a business in the bedroom of the state? Is that the point? Are we talking personal private ethics or public?

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Public.

Dr. Franks: It doesn't say there in your statement, it says ethical. It doesn't say in the public sphere. It doesn't give them freedom in the practice -

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Yes, it does. ``Public office holders shall'' - mandatory under the Interpretation Act - ``act with honesty and uphold the highest ethical standard so that public confidence'' - not private, public confidence - ``and trust in the integrity, objectivity, and impartiality of government are conserved and enhanced.''

I'm not so concerned about the words but the principle. The principle I'm trying to ask you about is would you not agree that if we had a set of principles like that, which would clearly state what it is we would all like to achieve, that would help some of the mistrust of politicians in terms of such things as junkets, receiving gifts from abroad, and so on, if there were disclosure, and we could bounce that kind of conduct off principles such as these?

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Dr. Franks: I would like to say yes because I personally believe that is correct. I run into a problem where I try to define what each of those terms means, because I can see so many conflicting judgments. I feel much more comfortable with the standards against which people are being evaluated not being that abstract, being more specific, like you shall not take bribes and so on.

I know that's not very helpful. One of the problems of stating things at that level is that I believe it's much like the existing criminal laws in Canada; every one of us is a criminal somewhere against those laws because there's far too much of it. Everybody is going to fail by that standard, because we never operate on the highest standard all the time. They wind up being what I call pious hopes rather than actual operational things.

I can't go much further on that. It's a worry I have about that sort of statement, because they're not self-defining and they're not self-enforcing. They're open to so many different interpretations.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): That's why you'd need a jurisconsult or some arm's-length, independent person to whom you could go and bounce it off, as they do in so many provinces in Canada already.

Dr. Franks: That's fair ball, but again that's just one opinion. It's not the end of the -

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): But would you agree with such a system, with a jurisconsult?

Dr. Franks: No. Just to be argumentative, no. I would rather -

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): You wouldn't agree with having a retired chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada being a jurisconsult to give advice to parliamentarians when they had a question about something they were about to do?

Dr. Franks: I don't think there's any problem in giving advice, but if the advice is authoritative in the sense of ``thou shall'' or ``thou shall not'', I think there's a problem there. Judges have their biases and interests just like other people.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Yes.

Mr. Epp, I didn't mean to interfere, but your question was leading in a direction where I thought it was about time we put some of these principles to the witness to see how he would respond to them.

Mr. Epp: You supplemented very well. I appreciate that.

I have one other quick question and then I'll pass if someone else wants some time.

You indicated several times that to you openness, accountability, and transparency were desirable qualities. How transparent would you be or how transparent would you require members to be? What would be the mechanism of that transparency?

Dr. Franks: I have explored that in my own mind to the point that I know that if I had to declare all my financial transactions and all my own personal assets as a requirement of being an MP, it would probably be a factor dissuading me from taking the job, simply because there are some things that I don't think are anybody else's business and I'm just that stubborn about it. So I find a conflict within myself of asking of somebody else that which I would not ask of myself. I must say that is something I have wrestled with.

I'm not sure about personal property for MPs - or spousal property, getting back to an earlier one - but I would say that for sources of income. I certainly would, yes.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Senator Milne.

Senator Lorna Milne (Brampton): I was just going to ask you about spousal property. Do you think spouses should have to declare everything along with their member of Parliament or senator?

Dr. Franks: That again is such a difficult thing to answer because families operate in so many different ways. It's certainly a factor, isn't it? If a spouse gets a job with a lobbying firm, that's worth noting. But how far along that line do you go, as we said earlier on spousal property?

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At what point do you start making these rules on purity, etc., so strong that you begin to affect whether people want to enter political life or not? At what point do all aspects of a politician's life become public? Or is there a residual area of privacy a member is entitled to?

I'm not comfortable with these, you see.

Senator Milne: Unfortunately, you're raising more questions with us. You're undoubtedly stimulating our minds, but you are raising more questions with us than you are answering or giving us any direction or guidelines on. Really, all you're telling us is transparency and maybe list all the laws that now do apply.

Dr. Franks: Those seem to me to be a good start.

I warned you at the beginning I had not written on this subject to the point where I felt comfortable I had pushed beyond what's available.

There are people in Canada, academics - I assume you've talked to some of them - who have written extensively about codes of conduct. I have never been happy enough with codes of conduct that I felt confident to say anything, because I look at them in the same way as I look at bills of rights and charters of rights, which have these immensely complex statements that are seemingly so simple but don't necessarily wind up getting you somewhere.

I am aware this present government committed itself in its red book to a code of conduct, and I think that's a very noble thing to do. But I would caution about the code of conduct that you don't either make the statement so lofty that we all inevitably fail it or make it so rigid and specific that it dissuades people from public life. It seems to me those are two very real concerns we have to face in this.

I have often seen in areas of government where problems of misbehaviour come up that a government will establish a regulatory regime that is so effective in that one specific area that everything that is interesting or naughty goes somewhere else and happens there. My worry about this is that you might make the demands and expectations of political office so lofty and so high that you're left only with people without any money and without any spouses running for office by the time you're finished.

Senator Milne: That might be a problem too.

On page 4, this really has nothing to do with conflict of interest, but I'm wondering about Canada being a lotus land of financial rewards awaiting the member when he or she retires from Parliament to a patronage position. Where on earth does this notion come from? In my experience, very few people, and even very few members of cabinet, go off to this lotus land when they retire.

Dr. Franks: I should not really have raised that with senators on the committee.

Senator Milne: Being in lotus land.

Dr. Franks: Well, it's not all that much of a lotus, as I and the hon. members well know. There's a tremendous illusion out there that MPs are well paid.

On the other hand, I would put it to you that the only government I know of in the western world to have wilfully made itself from a majority into a minority was Mr. Trudeau's government in 1984, through patronage appointments that reduced the number of members, if they had wanted to run, to a minority in the House, from a majority. Obviously the members wanted something as well as out of Parliament.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Mr. Malhi.

Mr. Malhi (Bramalea - Gore - Malton): Dr. Franks, do you think disclosure will keep good people from running for federal office?

Dr. Franks: The central problem of the Canadian parliamentary system, if I were to identify one single problem, would be the high turnover of members. The individual members of Parliament are excellent. Our problem is we don't have long-serving ones. Every study I've looked at, international and comparative, says the requirement for an effective Parliament is long-serving members.

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That having been said, there are more members who choose not to run again in Canada in elections than who leave for any reason in most western democracies. There obviously is a problem in the unattractiveness of life as a parliamentarian that affects the strength of our Parliament in its basic jobs of controlling the executive and expressing the views of the country.

There's a very serious problem there. The problem is not, in my mind, a lack of ethical people in Parliament, because I think the members of Parliament are fine people. The problem is this turnover, so we don't have long-serving members. We don't have a powerful, independent Parliament that can do the functions it wants.

I don't know at what point a code of conduct becomes something that dissuades people from running for Parliament, but that's something I think this committee will have to wrestle with.

Mr. Malhi: If there were a code of conduct to be applied to parliamentarians, would you recommend the establishment of an independent adviser, as is currently found in the provinces?

Dr. Franks: I think an adviser is useful. An adviser who is also a judge I would worry about. In other words, somebody is going to say that this is right and this is wrong, you can do that and you can't do that, or you were wrong to do this. I worry about that.

Is that distinction one you had in mind, sir, when you raised that?

Mr. Malhi: Some provinces, as the previous witness mentioned, have advisers. In some places, I think that's very useful. I agree with some, and not others.

Dr. Franks: The range in the provinces is still huge. What's acceptable in one province is not, at present, acceptable in another. I'm not convinced that the right route for the federal government to take is that of the most rigid of the provinces for saying that's the goal to which we should go. I'm simply not convinced. Provinces operate at a different level and have different requirements on them.

Mr. Malhi: I have one more question. I was reading in The Toronto Star, I think it was the day before yesterday, that when most congressmen or senators in America have a certain hidden disease and they disclose it, they think they're not capable of doing the job. They disclose it to the people. What do you think about that? It's not heard of in Canada too much. There are too many centres. Those people declare it over there.

Dr. Franks: I really have not given that enough thought to give you a useful answer. I simply don't know. I'm sorry.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): Professor Franks, on behalf of the committee I'd like to say thank you very much for coming tonight. You are the last presenter to this committee in this calendar year. We will resume again in February with more deliberations. We thank you very much for coming here. Your comments, particularly on the different ethical standards that individuals or political parties may have, have put a new light on some of the issues we were looking at. We thank you for that.

Dr. Franks: Thank you, sir, for the opportunity.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Oliver): The meeting is adjourned.

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