{"id":18713,"date":"2017-10-18T13:25:11","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T17:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18713"},"modified":"2017-10-18T13:25:11","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T17:25:11","slug":"politics-as-usual-conflicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-conflicts\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Conflicts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is a conflict of interest? Is it like pornography? You know it when you see it? Or is there an objective measure for determining when someone has a conflict of interest?
\nIn the regular day-to-day world, there is most definitely an objective definition of a conflict of interest. Most folks can recognize and understand it. If your company needs office supplies, and your wife happens to own an office-supply store, clearly buying your company\u2019s office supplies from your wife\u2019s store is a conflict. I think most people know a quid pro quo when they see one. If you stand to get something by agreeing to something else, then you have a conflict.
\nVirtually every business has a conflict of interest policy that sets out in clear terms what is okay and what is not okay to do. It\u2019s there to ensure that folks can\u2019t claim they didn\u2019t know that getting your driveway paved by Bob\u2019s Paving company for free, after you\u2019ve happened to award Bob the contract for paving the company parking lot, is really, really not okay.
\nBut things get trickier in the political world. A conflict is not always as clear cut. And it is always a very politically loaded charge to make regardless of whether there is or is not a conflict. We\u2019ve seen that with the Morneau issue and his failure to put all assets in a blind trust. The issue isn\u2019t that he has a conflict of interest, because, if media reports are to be believed, evidence supports the fact that he has complied with the various regulations governing such things, it\u2019s that he\u2019s at risk of having a conflict of interest.
\nHmmm. So he doesn\u2019t actually have a conflict of interest but he might in the future? That\u2019s the controversy? Seems a bit of political gamesmanship to me but it is par for the course in politics. All sides do it \u2013 levelling the charge of ethics or conflict of interest violations \u2013 it\u2019s just the Liberals turn to endure now.
\nThe larger issue, from my perspective at least, is how a conflict of interest is defined in the political world. Conflict doesn\u2019t mean bias; even when that bias is obvious. Unless there are financial implications for the elected official, a bias isn\u2019t a breach of the Act. Elected officials are not judges, nor are they Caesar\u2019s wife. So, an MP or MPP or a member of a local Council who is voting on whether to award a contract to Company A , the same company that their spouse worked for but got fired from, is not in a conflict of interest. He clearly has a bias \u2013 anyone would! – but he doesn\u2019t have a conflict. Does that make sense?
\nAt the municipal level, a conflict of interest only exists if there is a clear direct \u2013 or indirect (i.e. family) – pecuniary interest. And what is a pecuniary interest? Well, funny you should ask, because it is the definition of a pecuniary interest that seems to cause many a councillor to declare a conflict at the mere whisper of it and on the other hand let many a municipal leader in conflict off the hook in the end.
\nThat, and the fact that the penalty for being found guilty of a conflict of interest is being tossed from office. Pardon me for saying, but no judge in her right mind would use the power of the court to undo an election unless the mayor or councillor did something truly egregious. It\u2019s why we\u2019ve seen so many cases of clear-cut conflict of interest go down in flames. Decided on a technicality.
\nSo the whole bloody legislation, at every level, needs a rethink. We need a better definition of a conflict, or conflicts of interest and a better range \u2013 a more reasonable range \u2013 of sanctions for violating the Act(s). Just my two cents\u2026<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas What is a conflict of interest? Is it like pornography? You know it when you see it? Or is there an objective measure for determining when someone has a conflict of interest? In the regular day-to-day world, there is most definitely an objective definition of a conflict of interest. Most folks can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4RP","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-09 09:43:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}