[8] These two regimes seek to prevent conflicts between the public duties and private interests of elected and appointed officials.
The commissioner is also mandated to provide confidential advice to the prime minister about conflict of interest and ethics issues.
The commissioner enjoys the privileges and immunities of the House of Commons and its members when carrying out official duties and functions.
They included prohibitions on the use of insider information for private gain, restrictions on outside activities and a requirement that ministers either divest or publicly declare certain assets.
In 1974, an assistant deputy registrar general was named and an office was established within the former Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the conflict of interest guidelines administered by the Office of the Assistant Deputy Registrar General were modified several times.
While its predecessors were part of the government, the Office of the Ethics Commissioner was made a separate parliamentary entity in order to help ensure its independence.
In May 2005, Shapiro partially cleared Judy Sgro of wrongdoing regarding the Strippergate scandal and associated conflict of interest allegations.
[10] On March 3, 2006, Shapiro announced that he was launching a preliminary inquiry into conflict-of-interest allegations against David Emerson and Stephen Harper.
[11][12] Conservatives criticized Shapiro's probe as partisan and accused him of applying a double standard since he was appointed on the advice of the former Liberal prime minister, and had turned down earlier requests in 2005 to investigate Stronach's floor-crossing in which she received a Cabinet post, as well as a questionable land sale by Hamilton area Liberal MP Tony Valeri.
Mary Dawson was the first commissioner, appointed on July 9, 2007, with the coming into force of the Conflict of Interest Act.
In 2017, Dawson completed an investigation into a December 2016 vacation that Justin Trudeau and his family took to a private island owned by the Aga Khan.
On 14 August 2019, he released a report that concluded Trudeau had contravened section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressuring Jody Wilson-Raybould.
[17][18][19][20] On July 3, 2020, the commissioner announced an investigation into Justin Trudeau and the government's decision to have WE Charity administer the summer student grant program.
[24] On March 27, 2023, Martine Richard was appointed ethics commissioner to replace Mario Dion who resigned a month earlier.