Guilt trips: Questions raised over ethics of sponsored junkets for parliamentarians
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/01/2018 (2787 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — Manitoba MPs have taken free trips abroad to receive awards, give speeches and meet foreign politicians, but they insist these paid junkets support Canada’s outreach abroad, and are far from bribes.
Ottawa politicians are facing increased questions about trips offered by third-party groups and foreign governments, though Manitoba’s 14 MPs are among the least-indulged parliamentarians.
MPs are allowed to take trips paid for by outside groups, but they’re required to file receipts with the ethics commissioner. Since the October 2015 national election, five Manitoba MPs have taken a total of 10 trips, amounting to $42,773.32, while one senator is waiting to see whether a trip to China counted as a gift.
On first glance, downtown Winnipeg MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette appears to be the biggest jet-setter, declaring $14,933 in sponsored travel, though most of it is from a week-long trip to Taiwan with his wife.
“Obviously, I don’t believe there’s ever truly a free gift,” said Ouellette. He said the trip was a valuable chance to learn about the country’s budding Indigenous reconciliation movement.
On the advice of Global Affairs bureaucrats, he asked Taiwanese officials, including the region’s president, to drop its mad-cow disease-related ban on Canadian beef imports. The state ended up doing so two weeks later.
MP Candice Bergen took the most paid trips abroad, including a five-day conference in Berlin to meet with the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism Foundation, a four-day conference in Paris by the Iran Democratic Association, and a five-day visit with the Canada-United Arab Emirates Friendship Group.
Her three trips, totalling $12,435.05, reveal the range these junkets can take — receipts show the Paris conference took place in an unglamorous airport hotel, while the Abu Dhabi accommodation was a glimmering Gulf tower.
Bergen was not available for comment between Tuesday and Thursday.
The Abu Dhabi trip was funded by the UAE government, through a non-accredited parliamentary exchange group, which is common for MPs and senators.
Canada organizes official delegations through the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international body that includes rich countries, the Commonwealth and Francophonie, as well as groups representing most of Africa or Europe.
Experts debate whether sponsored trips are appropriate
OTTAWA — Parliamentary experts are split as to whether it’s ethical for MPs and senators to take sponsored trips, and when they should rule out such offers.
OTTAWA — Parliamentary experts are split as to whether it’s ethical for MPs and senators to take sponsored trips, and when they should rule out such offers.
Duff Conacher has closely watched federal ethics for more than a decade as co-founder of Democracy Watch. He pointed out roughly a quarter of MPs actually take these trips.
“It’s so weird to me that this goes on, because it’s a small number of MPs… every year, there’s stories about unethical trips,” Conacher said. “So why don’t the other (MPs) change the rules to say, ‘You can’t do this anymore, because it makes us look bad.’
“It’s just so bizarre to me that they keep this loophole open, and the cost is not enormous.”
He said international trips can be valuable, but they should all fall under the formal process where the Canadian government pays for it and the auditor general assesses their value.
“If you think you can defend the trip to taxpayers, to voters, then go on the trip and use the public’s money,” Conacher said, calling the spouse trips particularly “ridiculous.”
He said the accredited exchanges seem to balance out, because each government pays its own parliamentarians’ way, but the auditor general should still make sure the accommodations aren’t overly luxurious.
In May 2016, Conacher asked Ottawa’s lobbying commissioner to probe such trips, arguing junkets dating to 2009 presented a clear appearance of conflict of interest, especially because many groups offering the trips are registered as lobbyists.
He said the watchdog has shown “complete negligence” in letting his complaint sit so long the commissioner has ended her term and was replaced last month. (Her office said the investigation is continuing.)
Louis Massicotte, a Laval University professor who researches money in Canadian politics, said it’s a seldom-researched issue. One 2002 analysis of U.S. congressmen found the majority of sponsored trips were taken by those nearing the end of their legislative careers, suggesting they take trips to help find jobs after holding public office.
Massicotte said that raises questions about Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum, who took $73,300 in paid trips to China before becoming the Liberals’ foreign minister and then the ambassador.
“Are the sponsors trying to make new friends, or simply to cultivate people who are already amenable to their own views and interests? This we don’t really know.”
Massicotte said groups and countries are most likely to invested MPs who eventually become ministers, but that those strive to join federal cabinet are the wariest of seeming compromised.
“These people often have very hellish schedules, and whether they have time for travelling so often is a matter for debate,” he said. “Obviously, backbenchers do not have decisive input on policy, but they may have some influence.”
Massicotte added party whips often authorize such trips, so MPs don’t end up conflicting with party policy, such as the unofficial independence referendum held by Spain’s Catalonia region, or South Africa’s former apartheid regime.
Disclosures calculated by the Globe and Mail newspaper show the Chinese government has paid for 36 trips for MPs and senators since 2006, outside of the official Canada-China exchange group for which Ottawa pays expenses. MPs and senators have taken more than a thousand sponsored trips in the past decade.
A survey released by Nanos Research this month found 89 per cent of Canadians disapprove of politicians accepting paid trips, with the Prairies being the most opposed region of the 1,000 people polled.
— Dylan Robertson
In those cases, the House of Commons and Senate pays for the trips, and helps subsidize visiting parliamentarians from poor countries.
But there are another 70 informal groups representing other countries, issues such as anti-Semitism or disputed regions. Those groups only operate with trips paid by foreign governments or foundations.
Ouellette said it helps MPs connect with countries such as Taiwan, a democratic state China sees as a breakaway province, which Canada does not recognize as an independent country, despite trade ties.
“They do this because they need to shore up their support, and to highlight what they are doing.”
He said it was also helpful to learn western places use Taiwan as a testing ground before entering the mainland-China economy, because Taiwan has a similar culture without complicated communist bureaucracy. “As we evolve with our trade in China, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket,” Ouellette said.
Neepawa-area MP Robert Sopuck had similar thoughts about taking a similar trip before the last election. “They are fairly beleaguered, given their status next to China,” said Sopuck, who used the trip to promote Manitoba pork and canola.
“It’s the same as Israel; these kinds of democratic states that exist amid a sea of dictatorships, I have a very strong affinity for.”
Taiwan is among the largest provider of trips to parliamentarians, as is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which had billeted Winnipeg North MP Kevin Lamoureux and Ted Falk on trips to Israel before the last election.
Since then, James Bezan has taken two paid, four-day trips totalling $5,749.21, to give speeches on Canada’s advocacy for post-Soviet countries. One was a London awards ceremony in the name of Sergei Magnitsky, whose death inspired Canada to toughen sanctions against Russia. The other was a keynote speech he gave at the 2016 Kyiv Security Forum in Ukraine.
“On both these trips, Mr. Bezan met with other parliamentarians and government officials,” his office wrote in a statement detailing his schedule on both journeys.
Sopuck also took a $5,227.06 five-day trip with his wife to Las Vegas, to be awarded International Legislator of the Year by Safari Club International, on behalf of his advocacy for hunting rights and conservation.
“This trip was very much in-line with the work I do,” said Sopuck, who said it was helpful to meet with the U.S. equivalent of the sportsmen’s caucus, to talk about issues affecting hunting and fishing on both sides of the border.
Both he and Ouellette said they had no qualms bringing their spouses on the trips, because it took away from the gruelling, near-weekly commute to Ottawa, and because they both help shape their perspective on policy.
Headingley MP Doug Eyolfson visited Indonesia for a week as a guest of Results Canada, to see how the aid group used federal funds to boost healthcare in the region.
He said the $4,429.00 trip helped him understand issues such as local hospitals that had already paid for equipment but couldn’t use it until Canada helped provide parts or training, or iron supplements used in school lunches to help girls grow properly.
“A lot of people think that foreign aid is just giving money to programs; it was much more sophisticated to that,” he said. “It’s very good value for money.”
Eyolfson, a physician whose time in Parliament has focused on health, said a parliamentary secretary invited him to go, because ministers and their representatives are forbidden from taking free trips.
As for Ouellette, in addition to Taiwan, he took two subsidized trips to support Indigenous causes.
Suicide-prevention musician Robb Nash invited Ouellette to Cross Lake, some 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg, on a flight Perimeter Airlines had already chartered, with a rough value of $600. A Saskatchewan band’s health centre also paid his $333 hotel bill when he spoke with youth about tobacco; the flight was paid for by taxpayers as he had other legislative business to do in the province.
Ouellette used the Saskatchewan trip as a starting point for his on-foot trip to Winnipeg, where he walked and was driven across various First Nations territories in an attempt to see whether federal policies were actually working.
Meanwhile, Sen. Don Plett is waiting to learn whether an April 2017 trip to China counted as a gift. The Manitoban travelled with Sens. Leo Housakos and Victor Oh, whose family paid for the trip to visit the Fujian province.
They met with local dignitaries and a Beijing-based wealth-management firm expanding into Vancouver, but Plett said it wasn’t an official visit.
The Globe and Mail newspaper revealed the trip after finding Chinese media coverage, after which the three senators reported it to the Senate ethics office. Plett said he’d checked with the office before going, but submitted the trip afterwards out of caution.
If the office rules it was indeed a sponsored trip, Plett expected to pay a fine for breaking the deadline to file the trip 30 days after coming home.
“We should have a grasp on what happens in every country that we have an interest in,” said Plett, including those with conflicting interests. He said he declines most invitations, but has taken the Taiwan trip years ago because he’s interested in Asian trade. “I think they are entirely appropriate, and indeed necessary.”
Ouellette said the travel rules may in fact be overly zealous, out of fear of MPs overindulging or committing a diplomatic faux pas. He said it restricts non-ministers and opposition MPs from using their expertise to help boost Canada.
For example, travelling to North Dakota to talk about cross-border issues would require a paid trip or a formal visit that takes weeks for Global Affairs officials to organize. “We set up rules and systems that I don’t think really correspond, to get out there and promote the country we have.”
Sopuck had similar thoughts: “This certainly can be abused, but we’re the most trade-dependent country on Earth.”
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
