Thank you very much.
I appreciate the comments made by Mr. Green a few moments ago. I genuinely respect and believe that the intent here is to produce a good study that can be referred back to Parliament to offer ways of doing things to improve the process we have for everybody.
In that light, I'm going to go back to what I said previously. I raised an issue about my only issue with this being the preamble, and Mr. Green's response to that was that he didn't want to do that because this is really Mr. Angus's motion and he can't be here today. However, I would suggest that he is here in place of Mr. Angus today and I'm sure that Mr. Angus has put his full faith and trust in his abilities to represent him while he's here. It would be so much easier for me to vote in favour of a motion such as this and to support something such as this if that preamble weren't there.
We're talking about the culture of ethical permissiveness. These are subjective opinions, and people rightly hold those opinions, but it doesn't mean they are accurate. More importantly, those opinions do not impact the direction that this motion is providing to the committee to undertake its work. As a matter of fact, it will mean nothing in that respect.
I would suggest to Mr. Green, as he just asked for all the committee's support in voting in favour of this, that he would equally agree that the preamble does not contribute anything to the work that needs to be done, which will be given through the direction of the resolve clauses of this motion.
Therefore, I would move that we remove the preamble—that the motion be amended by removing the words "whereas there is a culture of Ethical Permissiveness around the Prime Minister; and whereas the Prime Minister has twice been found to be in contravention of the Conflict of Interest Act and is under investigation for a third potential breach; and whereas the Prime Minister's Office thus appears to lack the capability or inclination to adequately advise the Prime Minister with respect to the avoidance of conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest in compliance with Canadian law"—so that it would read, “That the committee move: that, pursuant to Standing Order...the committee undertake”, and so on.
It's just my opinion, if I could speak to it very briefly, that if Mr. Green's intent is genuine and he would really like to see all of the committee support this, he can definitely understand why, as a member who sits on the government side of the House, I would have a difficult time voting in favour of a motion that had all of that preamble in it. If his intention really is to see more people on this committee vote in favour of this motion, he would be in favour of removing that preamble, because it offers nothing in terms of giving direction and will in no way whatsoever impact the work that will be done by this committee. In my opinion, it just takes out some political cheap shots that are clouding what otherwise would be a really good study for this committee to undertake.