The interesting thing is that I have had some experience in applying a conflict test when a member is a parliamentary secretary or a minister. Whenever that situation arises, the sponsored travel is not excluded from the gift provisions of the act. It is excluded from the gift provisions of the code. Therefore it is doable.
I've also observed that in the case of ministers and parliamentary secretaries, there is a higher level of chance there would be some kind of a conflict because they have specific executive obligations. That is not to say that on occasion there may be some conflict with a member, for example, if in a committee or something he were dealing with some particular subject matter having to do with the country that was sponsoring his travel. I don't think those situations would arise very frequently, but to be consistent with what's happening to ministers and parliamentary secretaries, I'm asking whether there shouldn't be some kind of scrutiny of whether there's a conflict when these trips are accepted.
I agree with you that the fact they're made public goes a good way to putting those into the public domain, but what our office would do would be to exert some more scrutiny on what exactly that MP is involved in to see whether there is some specific issue there.