Mr. Speaker, when standing in the House on a vote, I believe that cabinet ministers are also standing and voting in equality with other members of Parliament. At that stage, they are acting as members of Parliament in the vote. Notwithstanding that, of course, they have an awful lot of clout, as cabinet ministers, in driving forward the agenda that they want.
The real issue here was the fact that the present Prime Minister, then the finance minister, was originally the sponsor of this bill. I think later it was moved to another minister because the government was embarrassed by it. The fact that it was embarrassed by him sponsoring the bill should have indicated the necessity to abstain from voting on it.
This particular code of conduct provides that all members of Parliament shall not vote on an issue in which they have a direct and a personal advantage. I think that is good. I believe that it is now going to be up to members of Parliament to ensure that this part of the code is upheld. When that happens, then we go to the ethics commissioner and we will see whether or not he can make these corrections.
I would like to see the Speaker intervene so that he would disallow the vote as it was taking place.