The practice might make it convenient for MPs to learn more about world affairs, but critics say it also raises the question of whether it opens the door to foreign influence over the nation’s representatives if they are catered to by foreign governments that have their own vested interests.
The conflict of interest code, while making it illegal for any MP to accept gifts given to buy influence, allows parliamentarians to accept sponsored trips related to their position.
Nelson Wiseman, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, says sponsored travel is not a concern as long as it is made public. MPs are not so gullible as to be influenced or become “captive of their sponsor,” he says.
“Let’s say you’re being sponsored by the Saudi government to go over there … and they restrict where you can go. Well, you get a sense of what’s going on.”
But the controversial remarks made last year by Richard Fadden, head of CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency, paint a more worrisome picture. According to Fadden, some Canadian officials are already under the influence of foreign regimes.
“You invite somebody back to the homeland. You pay [for] their trips and all of a sudden you discover that when an event is occurring that is of particular interest to country ‘X,’ you call up and you ask the person to take a particular view,” Fadden said in an interview with CBC last year.
That’s the same concern that makes Errol Mendes, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, uneasy about these trips.
“My great concern is that what are these countries seeking in return from these MPs, in return for all expenses paid and putting them up in the best hotels, etc.,” he says.
“Is that not a form of lobbying and influence-purchasing?”
Change of Heart after China Visit
Fadden has alluded to China as the most aggressive country in efforts to gain influence over politicians.
Last year, after returning from a trip to China, then-Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien withdrew his support for a proclamation recognizing local practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual group whose believers are persecuted by the Chinese regime. He reportedly explained his change of heart to an Ottawa councillor as the result of a “commitment” he made while in China.
While in office, former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, who has been invited to China several times, pursued court action to shut down a Falun Gong protest site outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver.
“When I go to China, they treat me like an emperor,” Sullivan told the Vancouver Sun in 2006.
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone was flown to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics as part of a junket by the Chinese regime costing over $30,000. He told the London Evening Standard that China is “going in the right direction” on human rights.
Under the conflict of interest code, for any sponsored trip exceeding $500, MPs are obligated to report the name of the sponsor, destination, purpose, cost, and the length of the trip within 60 days after the trip.
However, they don’t have to report if they conduct business other than the main purpose of the trip, according to Jocelyne Brisebois, communications officer with the office of the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner.
That’s quite different from the elaborate report MPs need to provide when going on publicly funded trips, where they itemize every meeting and discussion minutes.
“The ethics commissioner just gets the disclosure and she doesn’t do anything that would check or audit, and that’s the problem,” says Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch.
Conacher says sponsored trips are “unethical” and should be banned.
‘Suspicious’ Trips
Duff Conacher points to Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt), who tops the list of MPs taking sponsored trips.
“There’s so many trips, and he doesn’t even sit on committees that really watch these issues. It’s very suspicious,” he says.
Since 2009, Karygiannis has taken 14 sponsored trips to different destinations including Nigeria, Haiti, India, and his most frequent destination, China. The veteran MP has taken six sponsored trips there over the past two years, with each taking an average of over 10 days—time that Conacher says should be spent in his constituency or in Parliament.
The sponsors for Karygiannis’ trips to China include, among others, the Toronto Cross Cultural Community Services Association, Ganzhou City Government, and the Toronto-based Bond Academy headed by businessman Ping Tan.
Ping Tan is also an executive of the National Congress of Chinese Canadians (NCCC), a pro-Beijing Chinese organization.
The NCCC caused an uproar in Toronto’s Chinese community in 2008 for holding on to—for several months—roughly $1.1 million in donations to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. The organization was helped by Karygiannis to gain temporary charitable status within days of the disaster.
The money sat in an account at the Toronto branch of the Bank of China, a Chinese state-owned bank. Ping Tan was a board member of the bank at that time.
During his nine-day trip sponsored by the Bond Academy in 2009, Karygiannis, accompanied by Ping Tan, visited the Huamei-Bond International College in Guangzhou. The college is a joint operation between the Bond International College (operated by the same company as Bond Academy) and the Huamei International School in Guangzhou.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Karygiannis said his sponsored trips carry “absolutely no influence [by foreign entities] whatsoever.”
“The trips benefit the fact that when we meet with the people over there, you get discussions and trade delegations happening and all that stuff,” he said.
Going on these trips also helps him better serve his ethnically diverse riding, he said, which has a significant first-generation immigrant population.
Karygiannis added that when travelling to any destination, he spends his time specifically on the purpose for which he took the trip.
Snow Ruan contributed to research
