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Another Liberal MP has been caught breaking the rules and fined for violating the Conflict of Interest Act, bringing the total number of Trudeau government current and former members found in breach of the Act to a staggering ten, according to a report by Blacklock’s Reporter.
Liberal MP Randeep Sarai was fined $200 for failing to disclose “all relevant information” to the Ethics Commissioner within the 60 days of his appointment as Secretary of State for International Development.
Sarai joins a host of government caucus members to violate the Conflict of Interest Code for MPs. Since 2015 when Liberals first came to power nine other caucus members have breached the Act, including Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, then-Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Privy Council President Dominic LeBlanc, former-Trade Minister Mary Ng, and MPs Greg Fergus, James Maloney, Anita Vandenbelt, and former MPs Joe Peschisolido, and Yasmin ratansi.
Ng was also named among independent journalist Sam Cooper’s list of alleged witting or unwitting participants of foreign interference on behalf of the Chinese government, although Ng has denied the allegations on X.
The max penalty for breaching the Conflict of Interest Act is $500, all though opposition members have attempted to and failed to impose harsher penalties for violating the ethics rule.
In 2019, the Conservative Party of Canada proposed as a campaign promise to increase the penalty to $20,000. And again in 2022, Conservatives pushed for harsher penalties to disincentivize breaches of the Act.
Sarai has been in the spotlight before. In 2019, he had his law practice revoked over his history of “professional misconduct offences.” He has also championed a bill which Conservatives have dubbed a “soft-on-crime” law.
Sarai championed a shift away from relations with India after the RCMP revealed alleged foreign interference from India. Notably, Prime Minister Mark Carney is now working on reversing the Trudeau-Liberal government stance announcing he wanted to “deepen ties” with India on Monday.