I have said before that Konrad von Finckenstein is unfit to be Canada’s Ethics Commissioner. His October 28, 2026 appearance before the House ethics committee strengthened that opinion.
Commissioner, just what in the hell were you thinking? Or were you even thinking?
Canadians pay you to exercise independent judgment. Yet your explanations keep coming back to expecting other people knowing their obligations and consulting your office when THEY deem it necessary.
Who decides it is necessary? The person who fails to recognize the conflict? The person who would rather not mention it? Who catches the problem that never reaches your desk
So, let’s start with Lori Idlout.
In December 2022, an adviser in then- ethics commissioner Mario Dion’s office specifically told her that using her parliamentary budget to buy gifts from her own gallery would breach the rules. Your Idlout Report, published September 2, 2026, records that advice in its Background section.
Then she did exactly what the office had warned her against. Five more times! Not five items during one confused shopping trip. Five separate purchases after she had been told that doing this would breach the rules. What more was your office supposed to do? Print the warning on the shopping bag?
YOU knew about the advice. YOU included it in YOUR report, found a breach, accepted an error in judgment made in good faith, and recommended no sanction.
Read that back to yourself. She had been told… She did it anyway… Five more times! And you accepted that it had never occurred to her that her actions would further private interests? Do you understand what Ethics and conflicts even are? 🤦🏼♀️ What was the warning supposed to accomplish?
At the October 28 hearing, Aaron Gunn challenged your description of the limited personal benefit. You yourself acknowledged that you did not know the profit involved. Yet you were comfortable describing her personal benefit as minimal. Canadians can watch the exchange in the “committee recording”👉🏻 (https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20261028/-1/46030).
How exactly did you know it was minimal? You cannot acknowledge the missing information and expect us to applaud the conclusion you reached without it. Repayment does not answer the warning, either. Returning the money does not explain five separate decisions to do what the office had specificallt and precisely advised her against. You owed Canadians a convincing explanation for accepting good faith. All you supplied were reasons to question your fallible judgment.
Now explain Michael Sabia’s blind trust.
At the November 19, 2025 ETHI hearing, Sabia said his investments had been in a blind trust since roughly 2009. He said your office informed him on September 24, 2025 that he held Brookfield investments, and he decided to sell them immediately. According to his testimony, he did not know about that holding until your office told him.
So… why did you tell him?
For about sixteen years, someone else had managed those investments. Then your office identified a particular holding he had no idea about, told him about it and then, he decided it should be sold… all in opposition to the very intent and purpose of a blind trust.
So what rationale allowed the disclosure? Why was informing him necessary if he was hands off of his own holdings for the last 16 years? How was his decision to sell carried out under the trust’s rules? Your office receiving information and the owner being told about a particular investment are different things. Explain the basis for that second step because the logic you keep presenting of “just trust us” is good enough from your office, has a lot of holes in it.
Sabia was already administering Carney’s screen before that September disclosure. The published screen dates from July 10, 2025. Who was checking the administrator’s own interests during that interval? Who screens the screen?
Sabia is the Clerk of the Privy Council. Marc-André Blanchard is the prime minister’s chief of staff. Their previous decades long professional circles overlap with Carney’s. Sabia and Carney served on the same climate investment advisory board. A 2024 announcement placed Blanchard at CDPQ and Carney at Brookfield on opposite sides of the same announced fund investment.
Well I hate to inform you, Konrad, but those connections deserve EXTENSIVE examination. Their titles do not perform it for you and they certainly don’t decide on their own to consult with you. You need a dictionary, and it only needs one word in it for your convenience. That word is PROACTIVE. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with it.
At the October 28 hearing, Michael Cooper contrasted Carney’s ethics screen’s 103 listed entities with previous testimony describing roughly 2,000 Brookfield companies and businesses. Your office had not sought the additional information he raised. So tell us, why not? What possible poor excuse could support that decision? Konrad, do you not find it convenient that several of those 2000 entities are receiving government funding now, announced by Carney? Telesat comes to mind immediately.
Your counsel explained that a known conflict can require someone to step aside even if a company is absent from the list. Known by whom? Discovered how? You keep relying on people recognizing conflicts without explaining how they recognize connections that have not been identified. Calling a decision good for Canada does not answer whether a private interest was properly handled, either. Examine the conflict question.
Then there is the British phone in Carney’s other pocket.
At the November 20, 2025 ETHI hearing, Blanchard discussed trained staff handling calls and the prime minister knowing his obligations. He disputed the suggestion that nothing was screened. Canadians still did not get a clear account of how direct personal communications are checked.
The Wall Street Journal reported on July 8, 2026 that Carney keeps an active phone with a British number and his old contacts. His former associates know where he works. They can find the PMO number. This does not require an international search party.
And presumably he speaks to people after work, so I have to ask… exactly how secure is that phone? Is it encrypted? Does csis or anyone monitor it? Sabia and Blanchard are not likely stationed beside Carney’s recliner. How is a conversation involving government business and a private interest identified, recorded and handled when it comes directly to him?
“He knows his obligations” tells us what you expect him to do. We asked how anyone checks. Answer that question Konrad, because THAT is the one being asked… and has always been asked.
The same applies to friendships. When Jamil Jivani raised the relationship involving personal friend to Carney and Telesat’s owner Dave Goldberg on October 28, the issue was whether that relationship mattered to a decision and whether anyone had examined it. Nobody needs a Christmas-card directory. A specific relationship deserves a specific assessment.
Luc Thériault’s comparison with Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger raised another basic question: what proactive follow-up do you undertake when credible information appears in the news? Section 45 of the Conflict of Interest Act allows you to begin an examination when you have reason to believe a breach occurred. Your own website says information from the public or other sources can provide that basis.
Your predecessors used that authority. Mary Dawson initiated the Morneau examination in November 2017. Mario Dion initiated the LeBlanc examination in May 2018. Outside concerns helped bring those matters forward, but the examinations proceeded under the commissioner’s own authority. So explain your threshold and what you do to determine whether it has been met. Waiting for somebody else to establish everything first would certainly keep your afternoon clear.
And stop sounding as though the questioning is the offence. At points on October 28, you sounded more irritated by the challenge than troubled by the gaps it exposed. That is how it landed with me and many more Canadians. You are accountable to Parliament. Discomfort comes with the salary.
The government has responsibilities too. The ethics committee’s review, presented April 23, 2026, recommended graduated penalties for serious violations and authority for the commissioner to impose sanctions, with public reasons. The government’s September 21 response praised the existing system and said it would consider the recommendations. No firm timetable. How wonderful. Canadians can continue paying while everyone appreciates the problem.
Give the office meaningful penalties for serious breaches. But do not use missing powers to distract from Idlout. You could recommend a sanction. YOU MADE THE CONSCIOUS CHOICE NOT TO!
Diana Fox Carney’s unpaid Ocean Envoy appointment also deserves clear answers. Minister Joanne Thompson announced it on September 16, 2026. Later that month, the government announced a $1.2-billion ocean protection investment.
What authority does the envoy have? What role, if any, does she have in decisions involving that funding? What operating support and expense reimbursements are available? What obligations apply to the public office holders involved?
“Unpaid” answers the salary question. It tells Canadians nothing about travel, office support or authority over public decisions. A volunteer title is not a magic taxpayer-repellent.
Canadians also deserve an independent examination, within the Auditor General’s mandate, of whether these safeguards deliver value for money. Repeated hearings and investigations cost money. Finding a preventable problem after a decision has been made can cost considerably more.
Commissioner, your October 28 testimony left me disgusted rather than reassured. You kept defending an arrangement when Canadians needed someone independently testing it. If you will not pursue the gaps, challenge the assurances and defend your decisions with convincing answers, get out of the chair. Canadians are not paying to preserve your comfort in it.
So to summarize, if I’ve got this right and I follow your logic, your office warned Lori Idlout, she did exactly what she had been warned against five more times, and you knew that when you accepted her excuse of good faith and recommended no sanctions against a repeat offender. Recidivist is an adequate term here. You described her benefit as minimal while acknowledging you did not know the profit involved. Meanwhile, Canadians are supposed to trust that potential conflicts will find their way to your desk. She disregards the warning, you supply the understanding, and taxpayers supply the money while staring at unpaid bills and empty dinner plates. What an arrangement. In my judgment, that puts you firmly in contention for Canada’s worst ethics commissioner. And you expect us to trust your judgment?
You said people can write to your office. All right. Let’s test that. Your office expressly accepts information from members of the public that may support an examination on your own initiative. Canadians are members of the public. We also happen to pay the bills.
So, fellow Readers, please find below a letter to the Ethics Commish that you can copy and paste in an email on the following request. Let’s see what happens when it reaches your desk Konrad.
Sincerely Disgusted in Saskatchewan
Melanie
♡ Help me test the Commissioner. Copy and paste the email below and let's see if he was being honest. 👇🏻
Send to: [email protected]
Subject: Request to assess concerns about the prime minister’s conflict-of-interest screen
Commissioner,
Please assess whether the public record concerning Prime Minister Mark Carney’s conflict-of-interest screen provides grounds for an examination under section 45 of the Conflict of Interest Act. Please consider how relevant corporate connections are identified, how potential conflicts involving screen administrators are handled, and how direct personal communications involving government business and private interests are identified and recorded.
Please also assess whether Diana Fox Carney’s Ocean Envoy appointment engages obligations of public office holders within your jurisdiction, including decisions involving public funding, expenses and private interests. Please acknowledge this information and explain what further evidence your office requires to assess these concerns.