Ethics and politics are two words that don’t go very well together.
The first requires impartial thinking, while the second encourages partisan action. Do we want to be right or win? Between the two, you sometimes have to choose.
This explains the ungrateful welcome reserved for the new – and sixth! – Ethics Commissioner’s report on Pierre Fitzgibbon. This time it’s cleared.
Reports on ethics are like those of commissions of inquiry: more time is spent asking for them than reading them. The one on the pheasant hunting party on a private island is no exception.
The opposition is disappointed. In his eyes, there was at least “appearance of conflict of interest”.
This notion has become so elastic that it stretches to infinity. According to the cliché, in politics, perception is reality. However, perceptions do not fall from the sky. They depend on how the facts are presented.
The Ethics Commissioner is also interested in the appearance of conflict of interest, but with the perspective of a neutral and reasonable observer who assesses the evidence. And according to her, this time, the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy was not at fault.
Yes, Mr. Fitzgibbon was paid for this activity by a good acquaintance, Maurice Pinsonnault. However, it also happened before he entered politics. During the activity, he would not have mentioned an active file. The host didn’t have an application processed at the minister’s office anyway — its modest grants ($97,840 in 2020 and $68,680 in 2022) were assessed at regional and administrative offices of Investissement Québec. Finally, the host’s access to the minister did not change as a result of the hunt.
Mr. Fitzgibbon did not declare this gift which exceeded the $200 limit. This is allowed provided the gift is in a purely private relationship. We touch here on a delicate question: where does the private life of a minister end and where does his work begin?
A minister is not a judge. Mr. Fitzgibbon can meet with entrepreneurs – it’s even part of his job. But can he be friends with them? If we want business people to make the leap into politics, this tension seems inevitable. The code of ethics serves to frame it.
The caquists find that their opponents are bad losers, but they have the arrogant victory.
The Commissioner urged Mr. Fitzgibbon and his colleagues to be cautious in the future. Will the minister pay attention? “My private life does not concern you,” he got carried away, exasperated by what he describes as the relentlessness of the Quebecor media.
François Legault meanwhile made jokes instead of taking the commissioner’s warning seriously.
The code of ethics must be reviewed every five years. Mme Mignolet submitted its recommendations in December 2019. They remained a dead letter.
The rules should not be so rigid that they block business people. At the time, there was talk of adapting the code to cases like that of Mr. Fitzgibbon, who owned stakes in investment funds that injected capital into companies doing business with the state. These assets are not easy to sell or monitor. The minister was struggling to get rid of it or to assess in which case he might have a financial interest.
After two reprimands from the commissioner, he sold everything to regularize his situation. With that, he ended up listening.
If Mr. Fitzgibbon has not committed an ethical fault, this affair is revealing of other issues such as access to nature, energy sobriety and social mimicry.
We don’t have a photo of his hunt. But reading the descriptions, we imagine a sequel to the jester time by Pierre Falardeau, this pamphlet on the annual dinner of the Beaver Club in 1985 where people in power disguised themselves as old aristocrats to celebrate their greatness.
According The Journal of Montreal, in this exclusive hunting party, the participants wear Austrian costumes. Residences mimicking the Dutch style can be found on the private island, co-owned by 10 multi-millionaires. A private chef and hunting guides take care of them. Mr. Fitzgibbon was invited as a neighbor owner and good acquaintance of the so-called “lake gang”.
This is reminiscent of the time when hunting was reserved for nobles. And also the more recent one where wealthy foreigners and a handful of French speakers kept the most beautiful natural territories, like extensions of their domain, with the local population employed in their service.
Thanks to the Lévesque government, the private hunting and fishing clubs were dismantled in 1977. But as the minister responsible for this pioneering measure, Yves Duhaime, worries, wealthy people are once again limiting access to the best hunting areas and fishing. And if you are not lucky enough to be a waterfront owner, swimming in a lake becomes more and more difficult.
Finally, the episode makes you think about our relationship to energy sobriety. Mr. Fitzgibbon makes the correct diagnosis: to electrify its economy, Quebec must reduce its energy consumption and increase its production. However, not everyone has the same sobriety effort to make. In Quebec, the richest 1% emits four times more greenhouse gases than the poorest 40%. In the case of the ultra-rich like those on the island of the Province, the gap is even greater – it was by helicopter that Mr. Fitzgibbon was taken back to the hunt.
Finally, there is social mimicry. Values do not arise in a vacuum. For example, taking the metro every morning tints the vision of the world. We are exposed to human misery, provided we open our eyes. From the top of the skyscrapers, on the other hand, all these people seem to be bustling about uneventfully.
During the pandemic, the Legault government had underestimated the impact of the curfew on the homeless. It wasn’t for lack of heart. It’s just that homelessness got lost in its blind spot.
To be truly representative, the National Assembly must include elected members with a variety of backgrounds. It is enriched as much by the experience of a community worker like Manon Massé as by that of business people like Mr. Fitzgibbon.
It is not a career in journalism that prepares you to negotiate transactions with a multinational. Faced with the private sector, we want a seasoned minister. However, the policy pays less and exposes to criticism. To get started, you need a real passion.
No minister has been monitored like Mr. Fitzgibbon, even if the risks of conflicts of interest remain far lower than those that would have arisen if Pierre Karl Péladeau were in his place.
However, even if his expertise is valuable, it must be balanced by other points of view. A person who has spent their entire life in business may be so used to certain situations, such as tax optimization and profitable business grants, that they become desensitized to them.
That’s what’s cooking in this story. Even if it is not the ethical controversy that is claimed, it deserves a little thought.