This issue is a very important one for the ethics committee to consider. I want to begin by saying that I would normally be, and in the past have been, very wary of using the ethics committee to look at individual MP cases, because the separation between what an MP does and sometimes gets into trouble over and the role of an ethics committee to look at that would be very problematic. It could be seen as a witch hunt.
My concern here is on the issue of security and whether or not we have the proper protocols in place in the Prime Minister's Office and in the Privy Council to alert the government of the day if there are problems.
I refer you to the article that was just written, which said that the weak link in national security may be members of Parliament. That's not an accusation we've really seen raised before, but there have been a number of troubling cases recently.
It's really important to have representatives of the Privy Council and of the Prime Minister's Office come before us, because we know that the initial complaint to the Ethics Commissioner related to a business deal that the member for Brampton East set up with a construction company. That, I think, is troubling, but it was something the Ethics Commissioner was looking at under his purview to decide whether or not breaches in obligations had occurred. That is certainly not the role of this committee.
However, out of that business relationship came the invitation on the India trip, which is very problematic because it raises questions as to how he was put on that trip. Resulting from the Atwal case, many questions were raised about who is making sure the Prime Minister is being protected from these kinds of invitations where people shouldn't have been on there.
That investigation with the Ethics Commissioner is ongoing and has nothing to do with our committee, but in light of the reports on the gambling, we can talk about issues being addiction. Many MPs have had addictions over the years, and MPs have stepped down because of addictions. Some of them fortunately have recovered from their addictions. However, what was concerning was that this was an RCMP investigation. The RCMP do not investigate people who have addictions. They investigate people when a crime has been committed.
I'm very concerned about reports that say the RCMP were following the member for Brampton East when he was leaving Parliament. I would think the Prime Minister should have been made aware of that. To me, that is a national security issue.
The stories we're picking up that the member was being mentioned in wiretaps into investigations into people who were involved in possible terrorism financing and money laundering are deeply concerning, so certainly the Privy Council should have been made aware that there were problems, because he was sitting on the finance committee.
Members of Parliament, whether they are parliamentary secretaries, ministers or even backbenchers, have an enormous amount of power that has to be maintained in doing public service. The question of whether or not the member misused his position on the finance committee by asking leading questions about FINTRAC and about how to avoid money laundering should have raised serious red flags. Again, I'm surprised that nobody in the Privy Council or the Prime Minister's Office was made aware of this.
This is not something I would expect to be made public if the RCMP or investigators were looking at it. However, a prime minister of any party needs to be aware if there are potential security risks, because someone who owes millions of dollars in gambling debts is, by definition, a security risk. If people who are involved in wiretaps on money laundering are aware of this, that member is a security risk, so it's up to us to ensure that we have security protocols in place to address these issues.
I think this is an important issue, and that we should have representatives from the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's Office explain to us what the protocols are, when they know and how they know these things. If there are no protocols in place, then Parliament is going to have to say there needs to be a protocol in place in future to deal with a case like this. We're talking about security and ethics, but security to me is certainly the predominant issue here.