Everything under one roof: Canada’s evolving model of parliamentary ethics

This paper begins with a brief overview of the various institutions and offices that contribute to the overall anti-corruption infrastructure of Parliament in Canada. It then examines the creation and evolving role, especially over the past two decades, of the offices of Canada’s federal and provincial parliamentary Ethics Commissioners. A trend has emerged whereby different parliamentary anti-corruption institutions and offices are now being combined “under one roof”, typically that of the Ethics Commissioner. This trend may be warranted, but there is unfortunately very little data being made publicly available by the individual commissioners that can help us understand why these institutions are evolving in this way. Ethics commissioners ought to collect and publish more data about how their offices actually function in order to allow for more meaningful public scrutiny into how these institutions are evolving.