Senate ethics committee urges censure of Tory senator over trip to China
Published June 18, 2020 at 10:06 pm
OTTAWA — The Senate’s ethics committee is recommending that a Conservative senator be censured for breaching the upper house’s ethics code when he accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to China in 2017.
The committee’s recommendation follows a February report by the Senate ethics officer, who found that Sen. Victor Oh blurred the line between his private and public affairs throughout the trip.
Pierre Legault ruled that Oh breached the code four times and then withheld information and deliberately misled the investigation into the trip, raising questions about his integrity.
The upper house’s ethics committee says there is no specific remedy for the sections of the code Oh violated.
But it is recommending that he be censured by the Senate, to make it clear that his fellow senators denounce his conduct and to deter others from engaging in similar acts.
Oh declined an invitation to meet with the committee but sent it an email in which he accepted Legault’s findings and promised to do his “utmost” to keep personal and official components of trips separate in the future.
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