Mr. Chairman, let's start from the premise that the person who is appointed Commissioner is a competent person. If the Commissioner is a competent person, he'll definitely want to understand everything that Mr. Poilievre has told us, that is to say when a person has worked in the minister's office for four hours, the minister could say that person is excluded, period.
In a bill on transparency, why would we allow the minister to decide who in his or her cabinet has or hasn't worked long enough?
I've often heard the party in power tell us that it's a matter of perception, that the public's trust absolutely had to be restored with regard to wrongdoing within government, and so on. Now we would be giving the minister the opportunity and the power to make decisions within his department about people he can exempt and those he cannot exempt based on rules that can be quite complicated.
The Integrity Commissioner, who will be appointed upon consultation, could apply the rules, give the reasons, consult the minister and arrive at a response. We simply want to remove any appearance of conflict of interest and give the bill all the transparency it aims to achieve.
If the Conservatives don't agree on this, let them live with it.