Mr. Chair, I hear what you are saying; however, I don't think that the Ethics Commissioner could have been clearer. When you raise the spectre of what conversations have there been, what interaction has there been, the Ethics Commissioner has been crystal clear in saying, “as minister of finance you have no decision-making authority over matters of human resources at Alto, you do not have the opportunity to further the interest of any specific Alto employee”. If that is the language and the decision of the Ethics Commissioner, then that is what we, as parliamentarians, as an ethics committee, should be relying on.
We have tasked the Ethics Commissioner. We have built, as parliamentarians a regime on ethics that allows the type of inquiry that you are suggesting, Mr. Chair, to be invested in an Ethics Commissioner, someone who is independent and above the wonderful partisanship that the rest of us all live within, to be able to objectively look at these types of situations and to provide guidance that should be accepted by parliamentarians.
The Minister of Finance acted on the basis of the advice provided by the Ethics Commissioner, end of story, point final. We could call Mr. Imbleau to committee here. We could go on an expedition to find out what discussions he has with the federal government as a CEO of a Crown corporation on a major nation-building project where, of course, there are conversations with the government about how to proceed on high-speed rail, but that is actually beside the point. If we're being honest with ourselves, what is happening here with this motion is an attempt to bring individuals who are adjacent to this committee to make it into a circus. This committee is saying they reject they advice of the Ethics Commissioner. That is not an appropriate way—