Was Christiane Fox really in a conflict of interest? | Opinion

Christiane Fox, the deputy minister of the Department of National Defence, speaks at a Commons committee hearing on April 13. Photo by BLAIR GABLE /POSTMEDIA

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After Canada’s ethics watchdog recently found one of the public service’s top officials had broken conflict of interest rules, some were quick to pile on.

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On April 8, ethics commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein released a report that found that Christiane Fox, the current deputy minister of National Defence, pressed her staff to hire an acquaintance back in 2023 when she was deputy minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

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Though I don’t take issue with the technical accuracy of that finding, and I’m keenly aware of the importance of public service ethics, Canadians should appreciate that in this case, a breach of the Conflict of Interest Act doesn’t amount to what most people would think of as a conflict of interest.

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The commissioner determined that Fox used her position to give a longstanding but by no means close acquaintance, Björn Charles, preferential treatment for a job in the department’s access-to-information (ATIP) group by ensuring that he met with her officials quickly, seeking updates about his hiring and pushing for a higher job classification than they’d been inclined to give.

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Under section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, public office holders like Fox must not try to influence a decision that furthers their private interests or those of their relatives or friends, or to improperly further another person’s private interests.

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It’s that last part of section 9 that the commissioner determined applied to Fox, and it makes her case a bit unusual. As von Finckenstein found, Charles was not Fox’s friend within the meaning of the act. He was “another person” whose interests she furthered, improperly in the commissioner’s view.

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When we think of a conflict of interest, most of us picture a situation in which someone could be torn between their public duty and something that might benefit themselves or someone close to them. The issue isn’t their personal integrity, but rather the principle that a person shouldn’t make or influence an institutional decision in which they have a personal stake.

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But Fox’s stake in this staffing action, as opposed to her engagement, was strikingly tenuous. She had nothing to gain from Charles’s employment beyond evidently thinking it was a good idea. Her breach of the act lay in reportedly pressuring officials to give Charles a leg up and doing so improperly given that he doesn’t seem to have met the normal staffing criteria.

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Fox claims that she didn’t pressure her officials, although in the public service there isn’t much space between a deputy’s interest in an action and perceived pressure to do it. But in any case, Fox argues that her engagement was not improper because she was trying to address recognized problems in the ATIP group, including weak client service and inadequate progress on the government’s DEI goals.