Less than 24 hours after confirming that her office was looking into the possibility that Defence Minister Peter MacKay may have violated the federal ethics code, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson slapped him with a $200 fine for what she called “a serious contravention” of the Conflict of Interest Act. The Halifax Chronicle Herald reports that the defence minister has admitted that he was, in fact, “not in compliance” with the Conflict of Interest Act, although in an email sent to the Herald complaining about its headline from the previous day, he insists that “does not, in itself, constitute a conflict of interest.” Although MacKay maintains that his failure to report his involvement in two family-owned companies was an innocent mistake, in an interview with Canadian Press, he made it clear that he takes full responsibility for the omission. “We don’t have directors meetings. There’s no formal role that I ever played, and so I simply forgot essentially that my name was still showing on the roll […] I’m sorry about this oversight. It’s really something that I take responsibility for and I should’ve taken more active steps to remedy.”