Mary Dawson, Canada’s first conflict of interest and ethics commissioner dies at 81

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This article was published 05/01/2024 (998 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA – Ask Dave Dawson what his mother, Mary Dawson, was most proud of after nearly 50 years spent as a civil servant and Canada’s conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, and the answer comes easy.

It was drafting the Constitution Act, 1982, which included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he said.

“Putting pen to paper and writing the text — she was very proud of that,” Dawson said of his mother in an interview Friday.

Mary Dawson died on Dec. 24 from a rare type of thyroid cancer. She was 81.

A lawyer by trade, Dawson entered the federal public service as a researcher in 1967 before moving to the Justice Department a year later.

It was within that department she moved up the ranks and had a hand in drafting major pieces of legislation including the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Canada Health Act and the Official Languages Act.

“She was very precise,” Dawson recalls of his mother. “She took the things that she did seriously.”

Although her role in drafting the Constitution Act, 1982 became what she was most proud of, Dawson said for the first couple of years after it passed, she talked about not catching a typo in the original text of the Charter — the word “principle” was spelled incorrectly as “principal.”

It’s something he acknowledges she wouldn’t appreciate him reminding others about now: “She’d hate that.”

“That one mistake that she made over a (decades-long) career.”

In 2005, Dawson retired from the Justice Department where she had been serving as the associate deputy minister since 1988, only to be tapped to return to public service two years later by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

This time, it was to serve as the federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, which she did from 2007 to 2018.

The commissioner’s office names Dawson as the first person to hold the role. Harper’s former Conservative government created the new office, after passing The Conflict of Interest Act as part of its Federal Accountability Act.

She made many rulings over the course of her tenure, but among her last was her explosive report that found Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated conflict of interest rules by accepting a vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas in 2016.

Speaking to The Globe and Mail before her retirement in 2018, Dawson acknowledged as much, telling the Toronto-based newspaper: “I kind of went out with a bang.”

The commissioner’s office posted a statement on its website Friday announcing it was saddened to learn of Dawson’s death.

“Her leadership and commitment to precise legal standards laid the foundations for the way the conflict of interest regimes are administered,” the office said in its statement.

“Dawson implemented many of the practices used by the office today.”

After Dawson’s first retirement from public service, she was awarded the Order of Canada in 2007 for her role in developing constitutional law and policy.

Once she retired for a second time, she almost immediately found a role in serving on the board of the Ottawa Hospital.

“She never stopped,” Dawson said of his mother. “My whole life she was she was up, you know, before 7 a.m. and she was at work for 12 hours and she was up until midnight, like she just kept going.”

He believes his mother’s professional drive came not only from wanting to do a good job on whatever project she took on, but her enthusiasm for people and learning things about those around her, which she also did once in hospital.

“She was fascinated by people,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 5, 2024.