Either increase ethics fines big time, or just abolish the ethics commissioner post
By Anthony Furey
There’s the growing sense that an ethics violation on the part of a Canadian politician is now a meaningless thing. It wasn’t always this way, but it’s become so under the Trudeau Liberal government.
On Tuesday, federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion found Liberal MP Greg Fergus guilty of contravening ethics laws by signing a letter of support for a private broadcasting company submitting a licence application to the CRTC.
The judgment reads, in part, that: “Dion determined that Mr. Fergus sought to improperly further Natyf Inc.’s private interests because he intervened in the decision-making process of a quasi-judicial tribunal.”
The rules allow MPs to write such letters, but parliamentary secretaries and cabinet ministers cannot and Fergus is the parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
While it sounds bad to read that someone was found guilty of breaking an ethics law, Canadians are increasingly learning that it doesn’t really mean much. There are no real consequences to such a finding.