And that gets to the nub of the matter here. It seems the government has become quite blurred, in its own particular manner, in the way it proceeds when it comes to ethics. Because there appears perhaps to be a void in the act the way it's currently written.... No one could have foreseen that a government would so abuse its position. Perhaps it may be the role of this committee. Parliamentary committees, after all, do decide the destiny of their investigations and this committee is a committee of ethics. The expectation would be that we would look into ethical lapses. This, in fact, is more than just an ethical lapse. Over 50 of our colleagues on the government side seem to be implicated in this particular matter.
I know we decide our own mandate, but would you make recommendations to our committee on ways that we could strengthen the act so that in the future you would be able to look into these sorts of ethical challenges on the part of elected officials?