Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is a motion that Canadians, frankly, deserve to see in the way of transparency on the part of this government. The fact that Minister Sajjan was offered and accepted tickets to a Taylor Swift concert is a classic, straight-up conflict of interest. The minister accepted tickets from PavCo, a provincial Crown corporation. PavCo receives funding from the federal government, including $116 million in the past year to upgrade BC Place in advance of the World Cup.
The Conflict of Interest Act is crystal clear. It says:
No public office holder or member of his or her family shall accept any gift or other advantage...that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the public office holder in the exercise of an official power, duty or function.
Mr. Chair, here you have a public office holder, Minister Sajjan, accepting a gift for himself and his daughter from a Crown corporation that seeks federal funding and that has received federal funding from a minister who sits at the cabinet table and makes decisions about whether or not to fund that Crown corporation. That is a conflict of interest.
The fact that the minister, after he got caught, suddenly said, “Oops, I'm going to return the tickets” doesn't end the matter. That's not good enough. He got caught. That's the only reason he decided in the 11th hour not to attend. The fact of the matter remains that he was offered the tickets and accepted the tickets. We need to know exactly how that took place. There needs to be a level of accountability.
Frankly, it is reflective of a pattern of conflicts of interest and ethical lapses in this government. Minister Sajjan would not be alone in putting himself in a position to violate the Conflict of Interest Act. After all, his boss the Prime Minister—the serial lawbreaker—has broken the Conflict of Interest Act not once but twice. He's the first prime minister in Canadian history to do so.
That brings me to the Prime Minister. He attended the Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. Tickets were going for, in some cases, thousands of dollars—