Oh, right, it's the Prime Minister as well. He hasn't admitted to it, I don't think, but everybody else on the trip to London for the Queen's funeral denied, including the Governor General, that they spent $6,000 on a hotel room with a chef and a butler. There was only one butler. I'm sure that was a hardship for the Prime Minister. But it wouldn't have been a hardship for the “finding Freeland” future prime minister, who maybe is out campaigning for his job now and not staying in $6,000-a-night hotel rooms. That might be the inspiration for her campaign.
The paper continues, “Predictably Labor pledged to improve ministerial standards upon returning to government in 2007, and under Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard committed to a more compact set of Standards of Ministerial Ethics. This has largely remained intact, although renamed as the Statement of Ministerial Standards by new Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013.” So there were new ministerial standards and there was an open and accountable government.
I'm not sure we're getting open and accountable government when the Prime Minister and the public safety minister were briefed about Chinese interference in our elections and threats to an MP and yet did nothing for two years. That's not very open or accountable, in my mind.
In section 1 of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's updated code, under “Principles”, a couple of references are made to individual ministerial responsibility, particularly in carrying out their duties. Paragraph 1.3(iii) of the code states, “Ministers must accept [accountability] for the exercise of the powers and functions of their office...and the conduct, representations and decisions of those who act as their delegates or on their behalf—are open to public scrutiny and explanation.”
Furthermore, “Ministers must accept the full implications of the principle of ministerial responsibility. They will be required to answer for the consequences of their decisions and actions”.
That's paragraph 1.3(iv). What a concept, actually being answerable for the consequences of your decisions and actions.
When there's a decision to spend $3.1 trillion over the next five years, I think it's not a very high threshold to say that the Minister of Finance, in this “finding Freeland” exercise, needs to be held accountable by the duly elected members of Parliament who are scrutinizing this record level of spending.
Section 5 of that updated Australian ministerial accountability policy is called “Accountability” and it goes on to say, “Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office”. What a concept. I'll repeat that one because that's really apropos of what's happening in the House of Commons these days.
Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide enquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee.
I think I should repeat that because I'm not sure everyone was paying attention. So let me repeat that. Section 5 of the Australian code, called “Accountability”, says:
Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide inquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee.
So let's just apply that to the current situation of whether or not we have ministerial accountability in this government. We don't have it, clearly, given the difficulty that the House of Commons finance committee has been having in getting the Minister of Finance—the “finding Freeland” exercise—to committee to be held accountable. How can you, when the total number of appearances in the House of Commons since January is five, each worth $100 billion, as I said earlier?
The current Minister of Public Safety—and I know we were dealing with a subamendment on public safety—refuses to answer a simple question. On what date was he briefed on China interference?
Oh, did he? I'm told he did answer about the date.
What was the date? Was it Monday? It was Monday.
So the Minister of Public Safety was kept in the dark on the issue of China's interference with the member of Parliament, but as we know from the appearance of the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Ms. Telford, before a parliamentary committee—and she would never mislead a parliamentary committee, I'm sure—the Prime Minister reads everything, and in particular national security briefs.
So it's unbelievable that the Prime Minister wouldn't have known about this two years ago when the note came up. If he had, there's something wrong about Ms. Telford's testimony, and it says a lot about the Prime Minister's leadership that if he was briefed on this important public safety issue two years ago, he didn't inform his Minister of Public Safety about it—the person, and I'll quote from the Australian document, who is responsible for “the activities of the agencies within their portfolio”.
Why would the Prime Minister and the Privy Council Office not ensure that the Minister of Public Safety knew? Why would he know only on Monday, two years after the fact? That's incredible.
Ministerial accountability seems to be something very odd here, or maybe it's just a pattern, since apparently the Prime Minister rarely spoke to the former minister of justice about anything until the time he wanted to interfere in the charges against SNC-Lavalin, again, trying to override ministerial accountability. The Attorney General of Canada and independent head of lawmaking had integrity that we don't often see in this government and said no. She told the Prime Minister she wasn't going to interfere.
Now that's accountability, under the Australian position on ministerial accountability, that we don't seem to be getting from the Minister of Finance in her five $100-billion appearances in the House and her desire to avoid being accountable for a budget that plans to spend $3.1 trillion in the next five years.
While Australia also has a cabinet handbook, which was publicly available for the first time in 1984 and which has existed in some form since 1926, its focus is on internal operations of cabinet and ministerial codes, and the conduct more explicitly addresses individual ministerial responsibility.
It's much like the open and transparent 2015 Liberal government guide that guides all of cabinet, which primarily dictates how you conduct yourself in cabinet and that kind of thing. It has a very thin section on ministerial accountability and the role of Parliament. This is from a government that said, in 2015, that it would restore integrity to parliamentary committees, restore openness and transparency, return ministerial accountability and remove parliamentary secretaries from driving the agenda in parliamentary committees.
I sit on two other committees, and I've seen the parliamentary secretaries drive those. Certainly last year, on Bill C-11, I sat in and saw the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage whipping everybody and driving every single issue of debate. It was yet another promise broken.