Mr. Speaker, I rise in this adjournment debate to ask more questions and try to get some clarification about this ongoing saga that has continued in the front benches.
I would like to make the Chair aware again of the remarks I made on Friday where I asked the Prime Minister about his particular quote in which he said and I quote from Hansard :
I consulted the government's ethics counsellor and the one I appointed for myself-
We asked questions about that and did not seem to get wonderful answers. The Prime Minister replied to me on Friday morning, October 28 and I quote from Hansard at page 7367:
The ethics counsellor was consulted yesterday and gave his advice. The advice he gave was given to me and it did not force me to change my mind about the decision I took a few days ago.
It is pretty straightforward. It would seem to me that would make perfect sense if we took the Prime Minister at his word.
However this morning the ethics counsellor appeared on national television, CBC Newsworld. I quote from the transcript that we were provided where the interviewer said: "You're saying then that the Prime Minister at no point asked you to rule on the ethics of this letter". Mr. Howard Wilson replied: "No. That is quite clear. The Prime Minister indicated that he had handled it and came to the conclusion and he stated it".
This seems perfectly clear to me that the ethics counsellor in fact was not consulted, was not asked for his advice. There is a huge discrepancy here and we want to get to the bottom of it.
There are any number of guidelines for cabinet ministers, the most recent of which I quote from, when we look at quasi-judicial bodies versus the judiciary. It would seem to me pretty straightforward again where these guidelines from the Privy Council Office in a confidential document say to ministers: "You are advised to take very special care to avoid intervening, or appearing to intervene in cases under consideration by quasi-judicial bodies". It is again fairly straightforward to me. It would seem like the minister certainly knew what his bounds were and he stepped outside of them.
I would just like to finish before asking the parliamentary secretary to respond to this by pointing out that the Prime Minister has made it clear over and over again that you should not phone a judge no matter what. I refer to a situation that went on in the House yesterday and of course in the newspapers recently where the Prime Minister said that I was being dreadful for bringing up an incident in which he phoned a judge in 1971. Of course he said that he was just asking when the particular court case on this bankruptcy would be. That is fine. The Globe and Mail accused him further of saying that he had tried to intervene in that case.
Regardless the instance, regardless the circumstance, this Prime Minister stood in his place a number of times in the last week and said that no cabinet minister should phone a judge ever, for any reason, period. That seems fairly straightforward to me.
We are trying to get to the bottom of this. I hope that we get further answers and further clarification from the parliamentary secretary right now.