table in both official languages the government's response to 38 petitions.
If it is agreeable to the Chair, we are awaiting receipt of one of the documents which is being translated, at which time we will deposit it with the clerk today.
Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, June 11, 1996, your committee has considered Bill C-17, an act to amend the Criminal Code and certain other acts, and your committee has agreed to report it without amendment.
[Translation]
[English]
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) the committee considered the topic of federal regulation on biotechnology in Canada.
The report contains six recommendations. An important recommendation is the creation of a national advisory commission to provide advice on the safety and appropriateness of the technology. The committee also considers that a gene law may be necessary in the future for the evolving field of biotechnology in large part because of the important ethical questions raised by recombinant DNA technology.
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He said: Mr. Speaker, this bill wants to improve the quality of democracy in Canada. Whenever we receive a petition bearing more than 250,000 signatures and having some legislative impact, Parliament will be required to study that bill.
Two hundred fifty thousand signatures is an impressive number of names, it makes for a very substantial petition. This will show the citizens supporting the petition that they do have a direct access to Parliament, because a bill will be submitted to the House whenever the numbers warrant it.
On the eve of the twenty-first century, this is one way to ensure a better democracy and increased participation by the citizens of Canada in the decisions of this Parliament.
(Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.)
Since the member for Kingston and the Islands is now in the Chair, the proper procedure is that we seek unanimous consent for me to move the motion today. I would ask that the Chair seek unanimous consent that the member for St. Albert, being myself, move the motion in lieu of the member for Kingston and the Islands because he is in the Chair.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): Does the hon. member for St. Albert have the unanimous consent of the House to propose the motion standing in the name of the member for Kingston and the Islands on today's Order Paper? Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Williams: Mr. Speaker, I move:
That, in relation to the Orders of Reference adopted by the Senate on March 21, 1996 and on June 19, 1996, and by the House of Commons on March 12, 1996 and June 19, 1996, the reporting date of the Special Joint Committee on a Code of Conduct be extended to Friday, December 13, 1996;
That, if the House of Commons is not sitting when the final report of the committee is completed, the report be deposited with the Clerk of the House of Commons and shall thereupon be deemed to have been presented to the House of Commons; and
That a message be sent to the Senate requesting that House to unite with this House for these purposes.Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, while we are certainly going to support this motion and give the committee the extra time in order to table its report, I would like to take this occasion to say just a few things about this topic and about the process.
It is very important for us to recognize what is going on in our House of Commons, the place where we make rules for the Canadian people, where we pass legislation and where we administer on behalf of the people of this great country the money they send us in trust as taxpayers. We are managing their affairs.
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Referring to the incoming Trudeau regime in 1968, Grattan O'Leary said: ``So far we have had nothing but props and music. The curtain goes up and the play never begins''. That comment is true here as well.
We have talked a lot about ethics. It was a large portion of the debate during the campaign of 1993. It comes up very frequently in the House. Frequently the Prime Minister and other ministers of the crown, as well as government members, rise in the House and say over and over again: ``We never do anything wrong''. The Prime Minister bragged just yesterday: ``I have not had any ministers resign''.
It is a point of great consternation to us that in fact there now seems to be even lower standards than there were under the Tory regime of Mr. Mulroney.
When the Liberals took power one of the things they said in the infamous red book was that Canadians had come to distrust their government and they wanted to trust it again. The Liberals were able to garner a lot of votes because people wanted to trust government. In the red book, in the campaign literature and in the campaign speeches the Liberals repeatedly promised that there would be a new level of trust, that members of Parliament, cabinet ministers and, indeed, even senators would no longer be able to look after themselves, that they would have an obligation to deal ethically, correctly and honestly with the people who they deal with on behalf of taxpayers and that there would be no more of these shenanigans that Canadians had come to dislike in the previous government.
Today I want to point out emphatically that there is a lot of talk about ethics. I also want to emphasize just as emphatically that the talk is empty. The ethical behaviour that we had expected has not been delivered.
I remember back in 1984 that we were delighted because the member of Parliament for the constituency which included Elk Island was a member of the Tory party which had formed the government. Finally the Conservatives had won. We knew that it would be a great advantage, or so we thought, to send to Ottawa a member of the governing party.
A scant nine years later the hope that was enjoyed by Conservatives right across the country had evaporated. Primarily it evaporated because of questionable behaviour and ethics.
The same thing is happening with the Liberal government. It came to power promising to do things better and to solve the ethics problem so that once again Canadians would be able to trust their government. We need to look at what has actually happened.
I endorse the work of the committee. One of the reasons I am in favour of the motion to postpone for two weeks is so we can do a better job, a thorough job, instead of meeting a timeline. Of course that is important, but it should be the secondary goal. The first goal should be to do it well and the second goal should be to be timely. I would rather do it very well and have it two weeks late, as this motion proposes.
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One of the promises of the Liberals, and I mention it often in the House, was the promise of an ethics counsellor. The present ethics counsellor is a man who, as far as we know, has an untarnished reputation. He is, to the very best of his ability, doing the job to which he has been called. Unfortunately he has tremendous strictures on his position. He is not independent as the red book promised. The Prime Minister has made the ethics counsellor answerable to him only.
One of the purposes of postponing the work of the committee must be to assure that there is a counsellor, an ethics watchdog if you like, who will be quite independent of the political realm. That is the flaw in the present system. It is deemed much more important by the Prime Minister that there be an appearance of doing things right rather than actually doing them right.
Over and over again we see the political damage control team swing into action. All sorts of different tactics are used to persuade the people that nothing is wrong when in fact the simple and obvious remedy is not implemented. That remedy is to provide adequate disclosure. Let us lay the facts out before the people. Let us lay them out before the press. Let us lay the facts out before the opposition. The facts will speak for themselves. We do not need to
have a large public relations campaign. We do not need a damage control team if all we are doing is dealing in facts.
I would like to have a couple of things that are very important to us included in a code of ethics and I hope that our code will have them. One of them is that the person who oversees questions of ethics will be totally removed from any implication even of being part of the damage control team.
In the case most recently before Parliament that appears to be so evident. That is very unfortunate because of the fact that, first, the ethics counsellor is restricted in what he can ask, what he can do and what he can investigate, and second, he is restricted in what he can say. If the ethnics counsellor were truly independent, as the auditor general is now, he could say what he wants because he would say what he actually finds. He would put the truth on the record and there would be no attempt to try to hide it or to cover it up.
We need an ethics counsellor who is truly independent, totally removed from the political realm of this place.
The next thing we need is adequate disclosure. It is unconscionable for us as MPs and as senators, as people who are governing the country, to not be willing to put on the public record any facts and figures that may be relevant to a discussion. We need openness. We need to correct things that prevent the people from knowing the truth in a situation.
We need to make sure that when we have conflicting rules, for example, the Access to Information Act conflicting with accountability to the Treasury Board, we need to make sure that in those instances that the priority is honesty, openness and accountability. Everything should be laid on the table. If something is wrong it needs to be corrected.
In this House we are only allowed to call each other honourable members. I believe that by far the majority of us are. I would like to think that all of us are. However, just being forced to say the word ``honourable'' does not necessarily make it so.
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Many years ago when I was a kid I taught high school. I had students who were just a little younger than I and we had a discussion one day on whether they should respect me. As high school students sometimes do, they challenge authority. I remember that the discussion went to a level where we agreed on two things. The first one was that a certain amount of respect was inherent in the position because they were the students and I was the teacher. Because of that relationship there would be a certain amount of initial respect granted.
However, they quickly told me, and I agreed with them, that respect also had to be earned and demonstrated. As a teacher in mathematics I had to demonstrate to them that I knew my subject. I had to demonstrate to them that I knew how to teach and communicate it so that I could improve their knowledge of the subject.
The same thing is true here. I travel to various parts of the country and to my home riding. Some people seem to take a great deal of pleasure in being able to introduce their member of Parliament. They give us all a certain amount of respect which is very humbling actually when one stops to think about it. They do that because they expect us to be honest and open.
However, when a member of the House or the other place engages in activities or involves himself or herself in behaviour which does not reflect that honour, truthfulness, openness and accountability then the words become empty. Though they may still introduce us with an air of respect, the actual respect will disappear if we do not demonstrate it.
The essence of my little intervention is that while we wait for the ethics committee to table its report, I believe that there is much more involved here than simply giving the appearance again of doing something about ethics. Just repeating over and over again that we are ethical is not going to produce ethical behaviour. It is only going to happen if we have inherently a predisposition to doing things correctly and honestly. If we have a mechanism in place that will clearly and succinctly point out to the Canadian public when one of us goes wrong, let us be honest and open and put it all out on the table and let the truth prevail.
I am not content with my participation in this ethics committee to simply go through yet another exercise in the whole public relations work of this government or any other government in trying simply to improve the appearance of being a highly ethical party or a highly ethical government or whatever it is. I am not content with it. I will not be content until it actually is ethical, honest and above reproach. That ought to be our ever-seeking goal.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the Prime Minister has spoken often about his own secret code of ethics that applies to ministers. Over the last two and a half to three years he has made frequent references to it. The other day in the House he said that the ministers have seen it and read it. However, one cannot read something that does not exist either on paper, a television screen or somewhere. It has to be a document of some sort if one is going to read it.
Now we are finding that perhaps there is serious doubt as to whether or not this code actually exists. I do not in any way want to show any disrespect to the Prime Minister of this wonderful country. However, I believe that he must give an example of honesty, openness and truthfulness which is just beyond reproach among Canadians. I seriously doubt that is happening right now because of this blight on his record. He is saying that he has this
code of ethics and he is not willing to show any evidence of its actual existence. Then he says that this code is a higher standard than that which is out there and available to Canadians and parliamentarians.
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We have found over and over that even the code which exists is not being enforced. We have numerous instances of people clearing breaking existing guidelines. We have had several ministers who have written to quasi-judicial bodies against regulations.
In the previous government when that happened these people were forced immediately to resign. That is incredible. That was in the previous Mulroney government. They were at least honest enough to admit that they had done wrong and resign.
This Prime Minister is so proud of being able to say ``none of my ministers has resigned'' that he is closing eyes to the facts. There have been ministers who have breached these very codes but his inability or his unwillingness to take action has resulted in his being able to say no ministers have done anything wrong and so they have not resigned. The truth is on the other hand which says they have done something wrong and the fact is no action has been taken.
We have this recent case of the minister for youth. I cannot help but really feel bad for her and for this situation. What an anguish. I regret that this government and this Prime Minister have so little accountability and so little conscience that they will let her hang because of this. Where were the people who were to have instructed her on what was right and what was wrong? Where are the people in the department who she said in her statement never told her that what she was doing was wrong? That is not acceptable.
I have a certain degree of sympathy for this minister. She unfortunately is the latest example of people who are breaking these ethical guidelines and rules and nothing is being done about it.
Here is a case which illustrates perfectly my thesis that we need to put the truth on the table. If in fact what she is saying is right and true then it is perfectly in order for her to table those facts in this House. She could show them to me, she could show them to the press. Let the facts prevail. Hey, there it is all out in the open.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said we have this tradition that when someone says something we just accept it without checking. We accept it without looking. The Reform Party is ready to do things differently. We say there is openness, accountability and when a person says something we will begin by saying they are hon. members and we trust them but when it is demonstrated and proven then the trust is built and the trust is established. That is all we are asking.
In this instance either the minister is stating what is correct, in which case it should be demonstrated, or she is stating something which is not correct, as we suspect, because the numbers do not add up. There are too many blank spaces. We want to get to the root of this. That is we want.
Again the Prime Minister is bragging. He says nobody ever does anything wrong. He has the gall to accuse us in this House of breaking the parliamentary tradition to accept what the government says without questioning it.
I am ready to question it. I am here on behalf of Canadian taxpayers and when there is even the appearance of a minister of this government's not using taxpayer funds correctly, I and the members of the Reform Party are here to hold them to account. That is what ethics is all about and that is what we are going to do.
I am emphatically stating here that my goal and my purpose in saying let us give this committee two more weeks is that those types of issues can be addressed.
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We can have built into these ethical guidelines the fact that there will be openness. There is one thing we must definitely have. No minister should be able to hide behind privacy when they bring these types of things into the public domain by using public money for this type of expenditure. That is only an example, which I would like to state again. We have had others. There have been several other ministers.
It is wrong to simply put out the image of everything being right. Let us strive for the facts of the case, the truth of the case. That is the definition of ethical behaviour.
Mr. Jack Ramsay (Crowfoot, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I agree that we should have ethical standards to mark our own conduct to see whether we are at times meeting those standards. There is no question.
Not only cabinet ministers but all members of this House should be functioning according to a high ethical standard in our dialogue and our interchanges with one another. Most Canadians would expect such a standard from members of Parliament. I want to bring to the attention of the House that this has not happened during the time of my service in this House.
Just yesterday the chair of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs indicated that she wanted to speak to me outside the room. When I obliged and attended I was accosted with inaccurate accusations. Filthy language was directed at me in a manner that was far below the ethical standards of members of this House. What course do we have to deal with that? What course do we have to respond to that kind of interchange when that kind of thing occurs?
We need standards of ethics by which all members can conduct themselves so that we will never be accused of functioning in a manner that is below the standard that is expected by the people who have elected us and sent us to this House to do their business, so we can conduct the affairs as elected representatives of the people.
I believe that if we do establish a clear standard of ethics for cabinet ministers we can look on those standards as a guide for us all. Would the member for Elk Island agree that it might benefit all members of this House to create a standard we could all measure ourselves against and, if necessary, measure the actions of other hon. members from time to time, when need be?
Mr. Epp: Mr. Speaker, the member for Crowfoot is right on here.
This is what we must have for all Canadians. It is how our society operates in an orderly and functional way. We have rules. We have rules to control our behaviour on the highway and in many other areas. There are two things every citizen needs to know and there are two things every member of this House needs to know. First, we need to know what the rules are. That is the first function of the law, to make sure people know what behaviour is allowed. And so the ethics code that will be produced will apply to members of Parliament, to minister of the crown and to members of the other place. The first function is to inform.
The second function of the law is certainly that it is to be used as a measuring stick and to provide for means of holding people accountable.
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I refer to Canadians in general. We in the House of Commons are commoners. We represent the wider population. We need in this House a set of rules and regulations, a code of conduct which clearly sets out what behaviour is unacceptable and what is desirable, as the member for Crowfoot has said.
The second role of the law is of course to hold accountable those who would not live by the code of conduct. As a lawyer, I am sure Mr. Speaker knows the rules full well. It is not acceptable in the House that we have rules which are not published. How do we know whether a person is in breach of a regulation unless we know about them?
Some are available to us, but the Prime Minister's phantom secret code is not. That is not acceptable. We need to have a way of holding accountable those who would breach the standards. That, of course, is the role of the a code of conduct. I certainly concur that we need that. It should set out more than just minimum behaviour. It should have a broad spectrum of behaviour outlined so that members know when they have stepped across the line. If they know in advance, hopefully they will not do it. If they did not know it in advance, of course as the public in general knows, ignorance of the law is not an excuse, therefore it would then be used as a way of showing them what they should have done and also an example for others who remain.
[Translation]
Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski-Témiscouata, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak to this motion to explain what happened and why. The only reason we are debating this motion today is that the hon. member for Elk Island did not do his homework.
Since the end of August, we have had a report on the work done by the committee. As agreed, we were supposed to present this document to our caucus for discussion, so that we can then go back to the committee and be in a position to determine what we want to accept or reject in this code, what we would like to see changed, and so forth.
This week when we met in committee, the hon. member for Elk Island told us he had not read the document, so he could not discuss it. He was the only member at the table who had not done his homework. He was the only one who was prepared.
Today, we are taking the time of the House, and we will have to extend debates and pay people overtime, because the House will have to reschedule its proceedings. The Reform Party has made a habit of wasting the time of this House and then complaining about the government's wasting money.
Let it look at the weeds in its own backyard. He says he was not satisfied with the performance of the committee, but we are not satisfied, either, this week. When we wanted to set a date for a meeting, the hon. member for Elk Island was not available until the end of November. That is really going too far. He rises in the House and uses the motion that the reporting date the committee be extended from November 29 to December 13 as an excuse to talk about a case that has been the subject of questions in the House for almost two weeks.
Those members who want the ``pablum'' clause, as my colleague from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve said so eloquently, in other words, who want to make 10-year old children responsible under the Criminal Code, instead of considering ways to make our society a better place, those members are not, I believe, in a position to tell anyone about codes of conduct.
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If he would do his job and read his documents, we would not have to extend the reporting date. Perhaps he did not read his document on purpose, so he would have a chance to discuss a motion and make us waste our time.
When you want to tell the truth, you tell the whole truth. You rise of your seat and say: ``I agree with the extension because it was my fault''. You do not try to use a motion to discuss everything that is going: the code of conduct for ministers, the rules of conduct to the government, resignations under Brian Mulroney and resignations under the Liberals. Why not talk about resignations under Sir Wilfrid Laurier, while we are at it? He could go down the list of all
Prime Ministers who had to relieve ministers of their duties during the past hundred years, which would keep us busy all afternoon.
However, I think that Reform Party members should themselves start behaving like responsible parliamentarians and not make us waste our time. We have better things to do on a Friday afternoon than listen to their foolishness, especially since they are responsible for extending the reporting date of the committee.
[English]
Mr. Epp: Mr. Speaker, I believe our meeting was held in camera yesterday, but I want to set the record straight. What I said was that I had received no notice of the meeting that indicated what the agenda was, and so I had not brought my documents with me.
I have, in fact, read the document. I have not finished my work on it, but I have read it, obviously, because we have been working together on it as a committee.
I would like to point out to the member that I want this work to be done well. That is why I am supporting the motion. I want to be able to have the time to discuss it with my colleagues, which I think is appropriate.
I was under the impression, because there was no meeting held this fall, that the committee was basically being abandoned by default. There was no action being taken. As a result, I have to admit that I was not diligent in meeting the deadline because I thought it would never happen. That is simply how it is. There has been no action on this since last June.
With respect to the member's statement on our work as Reformers, yes, we do indeed want to do things right here. That is our goal. I am not going to be thrown off track simply by accusations such as this.
Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley East, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I am sure in your nearly 50 years on this earth that you have never seen such a debate as this. Although you are an experienced parliamentarian and an experienced person, because of your advancing age, I am sure you have never seen a debate like this on ethics in the House of Commons.
The member for Rimouski-Témiscouata kind of went over the top with her concern that we are wasting the time of the House. I do not consider it to be a waste of time to talk about ethics. I do not consider it to be a waste of time to raise concerns about the ethical standards of the government and its failure to meet even the low standards which seem to have been set. I do not think it is a waste of time to ask questions about credit card use, about letters written to quasi-judicial boards, or to ask questions about the resignations of some ministers.
If we want to talk about wasting time we could ask the government why it brought forward the debate on the speech from the throne yesterday, usurping even Private Members' Business. The speech from the throne was so overwhelmingly important to the government that it took up an entire day of the business of the House of Commons to talk about a February 1996 document which no one has heard about since it was tabled. That is a waste of time. If she wants to get excited about a waste of time, that is a good thing to get excited about. I did not see her complaining about it yesterday at all.
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It is not a waste of time to talk about ethics. It is not a waste of time to get it right when we are talking about ethics.
If we want to get an ethics counsellor, an ethics control system and an ethics checks and balances system that works for the House of Commons and for Canadians it is not a waste of time to get it right.
The member for Elk Island has asked if we could have a couple of weeks to put forward our suggestions on this. That is not a waste of time. The government has sat on that since June, this whole issue of the ethics counsellor. It has sat on this since June. It has not had one meeting for June, July, August, September, October. Suddenly the government says it would like to call a meeting together and run it through the House and it is all over.
Four months of no comment is hardly a recent rehashing of the concerns. To claim that it does not matter now and we should just throw our hands up in the air and let it go, when it comes to ethical standards it is not good enough. We are not going to let it go. That is why we want to talk about the ethical standards of this government for a few minutes today. Even if the government is not listening, I think the Canadian people are.
What has triggered this lately is only an example. I do not want to particularly single out one person, but obviously the minister for youth has been in the newspapers lately. She has been complaining because she has been under scrutiny, that people have been watching her every move, that when she uses a government credit card and whites out $9,000 worth of expenses, just trust her because they were for personal use on her government credit card.
She has reimbursed the government. The Prime Minister says over some weeks and months she has reimbursed the government. That may be so, but if you want to use a government credit card issued only to cabinet members for personal use, then you can fully expect that we are going to ask questions about it. Members of Parliament do not get them. No other member of Parliament, government or opposition, gets a credit card; only the ministers get credit cards.
On this idea that ``I did not have another credit card so I had to use the government credit card'', she has been a member of Parliament for eight years. She has lived in Ottawa for the last eight years while she has been a member of Parliament. To say she does not have another credit card or cannot get another credit card, cannot have another credit card, whatever, she has a government credit card and she is going to use it for personal use. She bought a fur coat with this stupid thing, a down payment on a fur coat. Pardon me, it was not a full fur coat, just the collar.
[Translation]
Mr. Crête: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think we are completely off topic. This is not what is on the Order Paper. We discussed it during question period. We are discussing a committee report on codes of conduct. I think we are off topic and I would ask the chair not to allow any further reference to this question in the course of this debate.
[English]
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): I am sure the hon. whip for the Reform Party is seeking to make his remarks relevant to the motion now before the House which does deal with the extension of time for the report of a committee on a code of conduct for all MPs. I am sure he will bear in mind the need for relevance in the remarks he makes to the House. I know he will do that as he carries on his remarks.
Mr. Strahl: Mr. Speaker, what I am doing is I am detailing in lawyer terms, as you will be familiar with, an ironclad case of why we need an ethics counsellor and why this review, this extension of a couple of weeks, rather than being a waste of time, may allow the government or try to make the government do the right thing and that is to have ethnics guidelines and some advice for the ethics counsellor that is worth more than just the paper it is written on.
That is why I am building this case. There are times when it is right for opposition members, and I would think and hope government members as well, to question the use and the ethics of their own cabinet.
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It is true that all members of Parliament have an ethical standard that we should adhere to, as the member for Crowfoot mentioned earlier. There are things that we can and cannot do. Those guidelines are very useful for all members of Parliament.
Also, no doubt cabinet ministers are held to a higher standard. I just went over the reasons. Cabinet ministers are the only people who get credit cards. They are the only members of Parliament who get a car and a driver. They are the only members of Parliament who have wide ranging responsibilities from coast to coast that affect government policy directly by the directives they sign.
They have a higher level of standard than members of Parliament generally, and so they should. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that should be so.
What I am describing here in the youth minister's case is an absolute, 100 per cent case of misuse of a government credit card. One of the ministers came forward the other day and said that because these were personal items she charged on her government credit card we had no business knowing what this was about. Absolutely.
If someone uses a personal credit card for personal use it is their business. The privacy commissioner is right to ensure that the person is ensured of privacy. If someone uses a government credit card for personal use, then the person has lost some of that privacy. They have used a government credit card, a government asset and government privilege, available only to the cabinet, for personal use.
Once that happens it should become public knowledge. I am disappointed that the Prime Minister seems to believe he has to deal with is a cabinet minister who breaks a guideline only when it is convenient for the government to shuffle the minister aside.
One of the guidelines I hope will be in the report which will be tabled will deal with the whole access to information request. The way many members access information is through the access to information directive.
We ask of ministers copies of their expenses, which is routinely done, their department expenses, things they spent money on, priorities of the departments and so on. It is routinely done. I probably tabled 100 access to information requests since being in Parliament.
I hope one of the things to be dealt with in this report is why there is an early warning system given to cabinet minister when an access to information request is put in. Why do the red flags go up in the privy council office when there is an access to information request about something to do with a minister?
In other words, instead of saying ``here is the information the member for Fraser Valley East has asked for'', it happens otherwise. People in Canada should know. It goes through the privy council and the privy council puts the early warning flag on it.
It says to the minister: ``Is there something in this pot here that disturbs you? Do you want to know about it? Is there something here that will cause some trouble?'' If so, they are advised of that and so on. That is what happened to the former minister of defence.
There was an access to information request put in by someone from the media. It went by the privy council office. ``Geepers creepers, sakes alive. Look at this. It could be very damaging''. It is brought to the attention of the Prime Minister, the minister and so on.
After they decide how they will spin it and handle it, eventually maybe it is handed down to the person who actually asked for the information.
I hope the report when tabled will deal with that. It is only fair that the person asking for the information receives the information asked for first. They asked for it. They wanted it.
I am not sure what the Prime Minister is thinking about by setting up the two standards. The minister of national defence was forced to resign for writing a letter to a quasi-judicial body. That is fair enough. Those are his guidelines. I do not know what the guidelines are but if those were his guideline, fair enough.
What about the other ministers? The former Minister of Canadian Heritage wrote to the chair of the CRTC, a quasi-judicial board, endorsing a radio licence application of a constituent. Was that breaking the guidelines? If so, why was no action taken?
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When Brian Tobin was minister of fisheries he wrote a letter to the chair of the CRTC backing francophone demands for the French Newsworld. He wanted it carried by Newfoundland cable companies so he wrote to the CRTC as a minister and asked for that to be done. Interfering with a quasi-judicial board got the Minister of National Defence fired, but Brian Tobin just becomes the terminator.
The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development wrote to the CRTC on behalf of a temple in Toronto that applied for a religious TV channel. That is interfering with a quasi-judicial board. The minister of defence was fired for it, but it was fine for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to do that.
I do not have it here with me today, but perhaps I will bring it when we come back. I will bring forward my top 10 suggestions for ethics guidelines for ministers since the Prime Minister does not seem to have any. It includes things like: Guideline No. 1, do not get caught. These are the tough ones. Guideline No. 2, remember you can fool all of the people all of the time and some of the people some of the time. These are tough guidelines. Another guideline is: Always check with Paul Desmarais. That is a good guideline.
I do not know what the guidelines are because the Prime Minister will not table them. They are as imaginary as his imaginary friend, the one he said he visited frequently to talk about the problems of the homeless. You probably remember that, Mr. Speaker. When he was asked by a reporter where he met this homeless friend I think the Prime Minister's response was: ``I see, I said, I had, I thought, actually I don't have an imaginary friend. I just kind of made that up, but you caught me. Anyway, let's talk about something else''.
The Prime Minister's ethic guidelines that he promised are around somewhere have never been tabled. That would have been an integral part of the report that the member for Elk Island would have liked to have seen tabled in this House. An integral part would have been the guidelines, how they are processed, who are they responsible for, who are they accountable to, has the ethics counsellor even seen them.
Watching the ethics counsellor on the news the other day I bled for the guy. The reporter says: ``So about these guidelines?''. The guy, who is digging his toe in the dirt, says: ``Well, sir, actually I have not seen any guidelines''. The ethics counsellor has not seen any guidelines. Against what standard does he judge these cabinet ministers? How does he enforce? What are the consequences? What is he doing anyway? I do not know if he gets paid for this job or not. Does he get paid? What does he do? Does he get up in the morning and watch ``Quirks and Quarks'' and then make his decisions? Does he consult JoJo? Perhaps he does. If JoJo is not available then he checks with the imaginary friend. How does he judge these people? There is nothing to judge them against.
Why does the Prime Minister not just put all this to rest, if he has guidelines, and table them, make it part of the report that the member for Elk Island would like to table in this House so that we can deal with it in its entirety, not some tromped up, last minute, drop it on the table, hope it makes it through the House guidelines at the last minute. It is not good enough. That is why today we need to talk about ethics.
The whole problem that the government is having now is with its promises. Mr. Speaker, I should sometime give you my top 10 list of the ways that the Liberal government tries to seduce the voters, but I am not going to get into that today. It is not ethical perhaps at this time. Ethics are involved with promises made and promises kept. Remember what the Prime Minister said in 1993. ``There is not one promise that I have made that I will not keep''. He should have signed that GST but he did not. But he just said he would keep them all.
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Then the excuses started. ``I cannot be expected to keep them all,'' says the Prime Minister. And listen to this: ``Sometimes in the course of a mandate you are faced with a situation where you cannot deliver''. That is kind of a contrast to his earlier statement. ``You have to have some flexibility because acts of God come into the administration. No politician can see everything happening''.
Mr. Williams: A higher authority.
Mr. Strahl: Maybe when he is consulting with JoJo, he can get it. But otherwise he cannot see into the future.
Imagine, acts of God interfere with the Prime Minister's ability to keep his promises. I wonder what that means to the Prime
Minister. Is that the flood in Quebec? Now, that is an act of God. That is registered. No arguments made.
But is it an act of God that the GST is still with us when the Liberals promised to scrap, kill and abolish it? Is that an act of God? When he said: ``We will work with the provinces to redesign the social assistance programs,'' only to find out that he moved in and did it unilaterally without consultation.
Is it an act of God when he says: ``I will renegotiate the FTA and the NAFTA agreements. I will not sign it the way it is'' and then two weeks later he signed the whole thing?
Is it an act of God when he says: ``We will develop a code of conduct for public officials to guide cabinet ministers and members of Parliament and Senators? And there is no code of conduct.
What prevented it? What act of God? What premonition? Perhaps some Epiphany? What was it that came on the Prime Minister and touched him in such a way that he could not follow through with his promise of a public code of conduct for his cabinet? There is no excuse. It was not an act of God, it was an act of omission. I hope that the people watching and listening and keeping track will say: ``You promised, Mr. Prime Minister, when you said in 1993 there is not one promise you have made that you will not keep, judge you on you record,'' they will say: ``You omitted, Mr. Prime Minister, to keep your basic, ethical promise of a code of conduct for your cabinet''.
It probably also applies to whips. All of us would be covered under this code of conduct. He has failed to deliver on that. He promised it. He has not given it to us. It is no wonder that the member for Elk Island has had to ask for an extension in order to get the proper code of conduct and the proper ethics highlighted for the benefit of all members of Parliament and especially for the cabinet.
Ms. Margaret Bridgman (Surrey North, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member to direct some comments toward the public's distrust of politicians. We have seen the public's trust in politicians erode over the years. This is the highest court in the land when it comes to setting rules and regulations by which to govern society. A certain onus falls on individual members when they are elected to a position as a member of this House to demonstrate leadership qualities.
To demonstrate these leadership qualities we certainly cannot embark on a ``do as I say, not as I do'' philosophy.
I would like some expansion on the perception of the public of how this kind of blatant disrespect for ethics in a position of this nature has come about and how it has eroded political credibility.
Mr. Strahl: Mr. Speaker, I can talk for a couple of minutes about why the faith of Canadians in politicians has plummeted so severely.
It has been a sad trend to watch how people have placed politicians somewhere down on the bottom of the list with snake oil salesmen as people to trust. It is unfortunate because I do not believe it is necessary. It is unfortunate and I do not believe it is necessary. The government does not seem to understand, and the Prime Minister has not grasped, that there is no shame in stepping aside while an investigation goes on.
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There is no shame in a senior official stepping aside and saying that while there is a cloud over my administration, while there is some question about this, I want a complete airing of the facts and I am stepping down until my name is cleared. There is no shame in that. That is a proud moment when you are able to come back to your peers and say that the investigation is complete, it has been fair and open and the facts are all out on the table. We give a nice round of applause and the minister comes back into a position of trust. That is a proud moment. That is assuring and reassuring the Canadian people that the ethics issue is taken seriously.
When you are not prepared to lead by example, when there is some white out on the expense account but you are told: Take my word for it, all is good. I will not tell you what it is, what it is about, how long it took to pay it back or the details, it is my own little secret because it is personal. People look at that. It might be true, they hope it is true but they cannot see it. There is a perception that something is going on. Normally there is no white out for routine business. It is done because there is something being covered or hidden on whatever it is that was changed.
It applies not only to ethical things that involve money. It involves leadership by example in other areas such as the government's plan for something that is as integral to our social system as the Canada pension plan. I hear the government say the only solution is to double the premiums and slash the benefits and that is it. However, members of Parliament get a pension plan fully indexed after six years. That is what breaks the trust with politicians and their constituents.
The member for Beaver River was the first Reform Party member to quality for the MP pension. The papers were brought into her office and basically it came down to her being told that if the MP pension was too extravagant, to opt out of this pension plan, put your money where your mouth is and there is a chance to do it right now. When the member for Beaver River looked at this asked: What is this program worth to me? She was told the pension plan at that time was worth $1.4 million.
The member for Beaver River said, I am sure with some hesitation and trembling because it is a lot of money: ``This is where the buck does not pass. This is where the rubber meets the road''. She signed away $1.4 million. Why did she do this? Because she had given her word.
It is not fun to give up $1.4 million. It was hers, it was right in the papers and she had it. It could not be taken away except by her own free will. She said: ``There are tough decisions to be made and there were promises made in the last election''. When the crunch came, even if it was a personal sacrifice, the hon. member stepped up to the batting box and hit a home run. That is why I have respect for the hon. member as the chair of our caucus which exceeds the respect I have for anybody in this House, on that side of the House especially.
She put her money where her mouth is. She showed what ethical conduct is all about. She set a standard to which the rest of us will try to adhere. I opted out of the pension plan as well. We had some leadership in our caucus. We made a promise and we kept it. Ethical conduct is directly linked to the appreciation that constituents have for their MPs. There is a direct correlation between ethical conduct and that appreciation. When we see the ranking of MPs going down, it is tied entirely to that. People always ask me: ``How do I know you will keep your word? How do I know I can trust you? How do I know that you will do what you say you will do?''
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Keeping ethical standards will restore people's faith in parliamentarians. That is what should be happening here today and in the past while with the Prime Minister. It has not happened. That is too bad because the respect for parliamentarians will continue to drop until he gets that straight in his mind.
(Motion agreed to.)
This is their response to members of the Liberal majority, who voted against the motion this week, and to Reform members, who have just made us waste an hour on an issue on which Canadian taxpayers' money is continuously being wasted. The people's answer is the 12,000 signatures I am tabling today.
[English]
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Kilger: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if we could ask for the unanimous consent of the House that the Chair see the clock as being 1.30 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): Is there unanimous consent to call it 1.30 p.m.?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
I move:
That nothwithstanding the Standing Orders and the practices of the House, Bill C-347, an act to change the names of certain electoral districts, be now considered at second reading stage, and that the House proceed to dispose of the bill at all stages, including Committee of the Whole.(1320)
[English]
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): Could I seek the clarification of the hon. member and the House? Is it intended that we proceed with this bill first, and then if there is time following that we proceed with the bill listed for consideration on today's Order Paper?
Mr. Kilger: Mr. Speaker, once we dispose of this bill, given the unanimous consent already granted, we would move it at all stages. There will be at least one amendment when we go to committee of the whole. Once that matter has been completed, we would move to today's scheduled Private Members' Business.
[Translation]
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken): The House has heard the terms of the motion moved by the hon. member for Bellechasse. Is there unanimous consent?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
(Motion agreed to.)