Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This brings me to my next point, on how we treat family members and how we treat designated public office holders. As members of the Conservative party would know, because they brought in the new Lobbying Act—and this was an act that was pushed by the Prime Minister's own chief of staff, Guy Giorno—the Lobbying Act doesn't differentiate between the Prime Minister, an assistant deputy minister, a member of Parliament, a parliamentary secretary, a deputy minister or the chief of defence staff. It treats us all the same.
Therein lies the question that I ask members of the opposition concerning whether or not they ought to in fact publish all of their parents' financial information. If they're asking the Prime Minister...in order to hold him to a higher standard of ethics, then I would hope that Mr. Barrett would have the same ethical standard, and even go higher, to publish his own parents' information, if they're still alive.
Mr. Barrett, with all due respect, I don't know your family situation, but this is a serious discussion as to whether or not all 338 members of Parliament in this House should publish their brothers' financial statements, their sisters' financial statements, and/or their mothers' or their fathers' financial statements. If the opposition is serious about this motion, then I would hope that they would proactively publish the financial statements they themselves are asking for in this particular motion.
In 2013, it took one leader to have a proactive disclosure for MPs to publish their own personal expenses, and that wasn't driven by the Conservative Party of Canada; this was driven by the Liberal Party of Canada, even though they were the second party of opposition. They were stuck in the corner, where the NDP is now. It took Mr. Trudeau, now the Prime Minister, to drive that particular innovation in transparency, and then the NDP and then the Conservative Party of Canada followed through. I think that's an important point to make with respect to this particular motion.
Speaking of transparency, I know that Mr. O'Toole, the leader of the official opposition, recently won the Conservative party nomination, and I, too, am wondering how transparent the policies are. Mr. O'Toole has presented plenty of policies to Canadians, and I only wish him well, but one particular policy he's proposed is to defund the CBC. Defunding the CBC, to me as a French Canadian, is unacceptable, and I think my French colleague would agree, but even my English colleagues who have zero presence of private media other than the CBC in their communities, especially rural communities.
The point I'm trying to make is that if we are going to be raising the bar on ethical standards, we should be aware that Jeff Ballingall, the chief marketing officer for The Post Millennial, has worked actively on Mr. O'Toole's campaign. One question that I have for the opposition is, how much influence did Mr. Ballingall have on Mr. O'Toole's policy to defund the CBC? Defunding the CBC, as we know, would be of direct financial benefit to The Post Millennial. Again, I'm not the one saying this, but the former leader of the opposition stood up during leadership night and said, you should not be watching Global News; don't watch CBC. You should be watching The Post Millennial.
Again, I'm not making this up. I'm just wondering if Jeff Ballingall registered to lobby a designated public office holder. Should the ethics committee be looking at this?