Mr. Speaker, they will not submit the guidelines.
Anyone who has studied the relations of ministers to quasi judicial tribunals knows there is only one guideline that ought to guide their communications. They should communicate only through statutes, orders in council and the submissions to public inquiries.
Yet yesterday the Prime Minister said the only guideline he gave ministers last November on such communications was that they should only do so through the duly authorized officials. Surely a Prime Minister who has spent 30 years in public life, some of them as justice minister, can come up with a better guideline than that.
Are the rest of the government's guidelines on ethics as weak and as poorly worded as this one? If so, what specifically is the government going to do to strengthen them?