Following an investigation into her finances, Canada’s ethics commissioner has fined the CEO of the taxpayer-funded Canadian Broadcast Corporation for conflict of interest violations.
As required by the Conflict of Interest Act, Canada’s ethics commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein disclosed that he has fined CBC CEO Catherine Tait for failing to disclose a “material change” of her assets.
According to the disclosure, Tait was found to have violated subsection 22(5) of the Conflict of Interest Act by failing to disclose a material change relating to assets within 30 days and fined $200, which she has paid.
“If there is a material change in any matter in respect of which a reporting public office holder is required to provide a confidential report under this section, the reporting public office holder shall, within 30 days after the change, file a report with the Commissioner describing the material change,” the section she was found to have breached states.
In a statement released by the CBC on Friday, the organization said Tait purchased a corporate bond with her personal pension savings account “without knowing” that it was considered a controlled asset, which is forbidden for reporting public office holders to have under the Act.
According to the Act, a controlled asset is an asset that could be directly or indirectly affected by government decisions or policies. Examples include publicly traded securities of corporations and governments, such as stocks, bonds, stock market indices, trust units and more.
By law, public office holders are “generally” prohibited from holding such assets, the Act states. Those with controlled assets are required to divest from those assets by selling them in an “arm’s-length transaction” or by placing the assets in a blind trust.
The Act states that RPOHs with such holdings must publicly declare the divested assets in a summary statement, providing information about the nature, source and method of divestment of the assets “but not their value or number of units held.”
“As soon as the president was made aware of the non-compliance, she instructed her investment advisor to sell the bond and provided proof of the sale within ten business days to the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, as requested,” the CBC said in its statement.
It said that Tait has complied with her requirements to disclose her assets since her appointment in April 2018.
“Every year since 2018, the President and CEO has filed documents with the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on all of her personal finances to fulfill the annual review obligations as an RPOH under the Conflict of Interest Act,” the statement said. “She has been fully compliant every year since becoming President.”
Rachael Thomas, the Conservative heritage critic, took to X, renewing calls to defund the state broadcaster and for the CBC president and CEO to testify before a committee about the fine.
Michael Barrett, the Conservative ethics and accountable government critic, tied the incident to the growing list of ethics violations under the current government.
“Another Trudeau Liberal has been found guilty of breaking Canada’s ethics laws. This is after 9 years of the NDP-Liberals, with Trudeau twice found guilty of breaking the law himself,” he said on X. “They’re not worth the corruption. Call a carbon tax election. Fire Trudeau.”
CBC representatives responded to True North’s requests to comment by pointing to the statement it released Friday morning.
“This is par for too many politicians and bureaucrats – they break their own ethics rules. In this case, the federal government should not have a state broadcaster, period,” Kris Sims, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told True North in an email.
She said the federal government should not be in the media business, and from an ethical standpoint, journalists being paid for by the state is a “gigantic conflict of interest” in itself. She noted what the CTF considers “huge government waste” from other instances where Tait billed Canadian taxpayers for travel expenses to her $5.4 million residence in Brooklyn, NY.
“If the head of a private media company wanted to declare their legal address to be in Brooklyn, NY, or the planet Mars, and commute into work on their own dime, it would not matter to taxpayers, and the ethics commissioner wouldn’t be involved at all,” Sims said. “But in this case, the feds have their own media wing, and taxpayers pay through the nose for it.”
Sims said it’s high time Canadians defunded the CBC, and the recent ethics violation is just another reason to do it.
“The CBC is costing taxpayers $1.4 billion this year. This is a huge waste of money,” she said. “With that kind of money, we could pay the salaries for 7,000 paramedics and 7,000 cops for the year instead.”
