Thank you, Chair.
I share the salutations: happy new year to everyone around the table.
It is somewhat unusual to have a meeting at this particular time, but I think we're into uncharted waters a bit. We've never had a report quite like this from an Ethics Commissioner, so I think our response should also meet the seriousness of what has happened.
My colleague mentioned the notion of an opportunity. I would put this to my Liberal colleagues in particular, because I suspect the instinct might be to oppose a motion like this: a political calculation about a sitting Prime Minister appearing before a committee and answering questions. While this is not unprecedented in Canadian history, it is unprecedented to have a Prime Minister who has been found in violation of the ethics act. We have not had that before. I, too, watched the press conference that followed the release of this report, as I'm sure some of my friends across the way did. It was clear not only that some of the questions caused the Prime Minister some challenges in answering directly, but that the average Canadian watching that and looking for answers to some pretty specific points and decisions the Prime Minister and his office made with regard to this trip would have left that press conference still not having those answers.
I don't want to knock down question period too much, Chair, because it does serve a purpose. It allows certain things to be demonstrated from time to time, but as members of Parliament, we all know that when something is of a serious nature that requires time and examination, committees are where the best work of Parliament happens. I think—and I hope my colleagues share this view—this committee works very well, even when discussing issues that have been difficult, issues around access to information and privacy and ethics. Only in rare instances have I felt any of the bad elements of partisanship enter into our conversations. I think this committee works very well in producing our reports, and often those are unanimous.
Now, I want to be completely open about the intention behind such a meeting, for me. Here, I am addressing mostly my Liberal colleagues. I've heard Mr. Kent's sentiments; I share some of those, if not all of them. I take this incredibly seriously. Influencing office holders—as we all are—is about something that's very important to me, and I think it's important to the people I represent.
I hope it's important to all of us and to the people we represent that, regardless of our partisan interest and regardless of the specific issues we fight on, the issue of not being influenced, of having clear ethical rules and clear consequences for breaking those rules, is important for the trust that Canadians need to maintain in all of us. Regardless of what views those Canadians hold, we hope they all hold the idea that ethics matter, that this isn't a game.
I think there was an unfortunate analogy used by the Prime Minister this morning in referring to this as partisan games. I don't take ethics as a game. I think this is actually incredibly important. I assume the Prime Minister didn't intend the comments to be taken that way, but referring to things that happen here in Parliament as partisanship and games and to everything else that happens as serious is a wrong interpretation of our world, because then it implicates Parliament as being nothing but that.
Prime Minister Trudeau set a very high bar coming into office, particularly in coming out of the previous government—no offence, Mr. Kent and others—in which accountability and transparency were a problem; we saw the affairs of the Senate and other issues, such as the Elections Act and whatnot. The Prime Minister came forward as a candidate and then as a sitting Prime Minister with some very strong and clear directives. I remember being quite taken by some of those commitments around things like conflict of interest, not just in the letter of the law, but in the spirit of the law: not only to not be found in a conflict of interest, but to not even have the appearance of a conflict of interest. I remember thinking, “That's a very high and appropriate bar for us to have as public office holders.”
One of the questions—again, being transparent to my Liberal colleagues so they cannot concern themselves about this being some sort of malicious attempt—would be in regard to the Prime Minister's mandate letters, which he set out for all members of cabinet and which I assume applied to him as well: that in entering this Liberal cabinet, one of the clear rules would be not to be in a conflict of interest and not to have the appearance of a conflict of interest, and that's a clear mandate that we are all familiar with. Whenever an organization or a leader sets a rule, if the rule is broken, there are consequences. I assume that in putting that rule down, if a cabinet minister were to fall into a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest, there would be a consequence to that action. Otherwise, what's the point of having the rule? The challenge we have in this case is that the boss himself has broken the rule, as has been found by the Ethics Commissioner.
I'm trying to imagine the average Canadian workplace. You go to work for somebody and they say, “If you're going to work here, these are the rules you have to follow.” For example, if you're working at a bank, you can't accept gifts from somebody who is doing business with the bank. Then the next day you come into work and you see the bank manager accepting a gift from somebody doing work with the bank. You can draw a couple of conclusions. You can say, “Well, that rule doesn't really mean anything and I, too, can do it,” or you want to raise concerns about it.
My assumption is that, in setting these rules, the Prime Minister's intention was good: to restore the public faith in elected office that had been lost, and to combat the cynicism that we often deal with from those who are not in politics saying, “It's all just a game. It's all just people looking out for themselves.” We set these rules. If there is no consequence other than a report and an awkward—if I can use that term—press conference, then that doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent for those who are intentionally looking to break the rules.
Another question I would have would be about his choice and decision—as was reported by Ms. Dawson, the now former commissioner—not to recuse himself from meetings that pertained to the foundation that was established by the Aga Khan to lobby the government.
I misspoke. The foundation exists. There is a lobbying group that has been established to lobby on behalf of the Aga Khan Foundation. Having just a few days prior returned from a trip that was essentially paid for, except for the commercial flights, by the Aga Khan, he was in a meeting dealing with business that affected the Aga Khan Foundation's interests and did not recuse himself from that meeting. That is a question I have for the Prime Minister. It's a question that remains unanswered to this date.
This is the forum to do it. This is the forum where we can have a civil exchange, as Mr. Kent talked about, and find out where the lines are in the Prime Minister's own mind. Clearly, how he interprets these rules and their application affects not just him but everybody in his cabinet, and I would think, by extension, all of Parliament.
I'm trying to imagine a scenario in which we, members of Parliament who are not prime ministers, would find ourselves if somebody offered us a nice painting. We said thank you and we accepted it. It was later determined by the Ethics Commissioner that it was accepted inappropriately. We should never have accepted the painting. The natural justice, to me—I don't know about my colleagues—at a bare minimum would be to return the painting. We wouldn't keep it, would we?
For the Canadians watching, a relevant question I would put to the Prime Minister is this. I don't think he has denied this. I could be wrong, but someone will correct me. He has now admitted that accepting this trip was inappropriate, that to ask for and receive a vacation to a private island for him, his family, and some friends, while the Aga Khan was also lobbying the Prime Minister's Office, was inappropriate and broke the ethics rules that we have. Why hasn't there been a suggestion from the Prime Minister to pay that back?
I'm going to disagree with my Conservative colleagues about the payment back of security fees. I have a different view of things. I think the Prime Minister incurs security costs just by nature of being a Prime Minister, but, for me, the cost of the trip itself remains. What's the difference between accepting that painting on the wall and accepting a free trip? If both of those gifts were found to be against our ethics rules, why does the Prime Minister remain in the enjoyment of that free vacation when that would not be offered to somebody else? As the commissioner found in her report, the argument of friendship—“Hey, do you want to use my cottage for the weekend, old buddy?”—doesn't work. It did not qualify and did not satisfy our commissioner.
I don't want to go on more than this because I'm curious about my Liberal colleagues and what their views are. I believe questions remain unanswered.
The Prime Minister is, by law and nature, accountable to Parliament. Town halls are great. I do them all the time. But they do not substitute for this and should not be seen as substitutions for this. I think Canadians would broadly agree. They enjoy the opportunity to ask their Prime Minister questions. The Prime Minister of Canada is accountable to Parliament, ultimately.
None of us sitting around this table are in the government. None of us are in cabinet. We don't work for the Prime Minister's Office, none of us. Our job, collectively, is to hold the government to account, because the government has an extraordinary amount of power. The founders of our country built this for us to do our jobs.
It is not unprecedented, but is maybe unusual, for a Prime Minister to appear before a parliamentary committee. My commitment, and I hope my colleagues know this of me from our experiences, would be to treat him with the utmost respect deserving of his office and to ask questions that I believe are pertinent and on the minds of Canadians about the rules as he interprets them, about the consequences for breaking those rules as he interprets them, and about the culture that has been created in his office and in his cabinet with respect to ethics and conflicts of interest.
We've heard, Chair, previously, in conversations, that the Liberals are open to the idea of reviewing and strengthening the act, as Madame Dawson has urged us to do in many Parliaments now. I think it would be encouraging to hear from the Prime Minister an actual commitment to make some of the changes. I would be curious about his ideas. What changes could we make that would more firmly and clearly define what the rules are, remove some of the loopholes that have been identified by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, and move this forward so that it does not simply concern a scandal or an issue raised about the Prime Minister's choices around a trip but actually demonstrably improves Parliament and the trust Canadians can have in it?
I look forward to comments from my Liberal colleagues across the way, and to our resolving this. While I appreciate that the instinct might be to resist such a scenario as calling the Prime Minister, I think he is more than capable of answering questions—hopefully thoughtful ones—from us as committee members so we can understand how we can make things better and understand the decisions that were made.