Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this opposition day motion on ethics in government.
One has to wonder about the timing of this motion. This motion on ethics comes from a party that yesterday spent the whole time of the House with delaying tactics in a most unethical manner. Surely something must be said about that.
How about the political party that ran out of speakers and then proposed the adjournment of the debate in order to cause a half-hour bell in order not to have a vote? Could it be that those ethical people were afraid of not winning that vote at that particular time and they did not want to proceed with the vote? What about the ethics of that?
We are speaking of ethics. Earlier today we had an hon. member state in this House that the government had fired Dr. Lorne Greenaway of Williams Lake, British Columbia, who was sitting on the British Columbia Treaty Commission. I tried to obtain from the hon. member more details about this particular person. When I did not get more details I sent for a copy of the order in council appointments. I found out that Dr. Lorne Greenaway's appointment-a former Conservative MP, and a fine gentleman, by the way-expired on April 13. He was not fired. It expired. I have it on page 131.01 of the order in council book, which I have in my hand.
What about the ethics of members making statements like that, which are diametrically opposed to the facts? Can I put it kindly? What kinds of ethics are those? That is playing fast and loose with things that should be true.
This is on a day on which we are supposed to be debating ethics. Are we going to get an apology later for having made that kind of a statement in the House? Fat chance. Fat chance from those ethical people across the way.
Those are the same ethical people who were elected pretending to the people of Canada that MPs were overpaid and they were going to come here to Ottawa and straighten it out. They were going to eat in the cafeteria because they did not want to eat in the parliamentary restaurant. Then of course it became obvious to most of us that the cafeteria lost more money than the restaurant, which kind of destroyed that argument for the hon. members in question.
Then they said that they wanted to get rid of the limousine. They spent government time, taxpayers' dollars, having their limousine prepared. It was all made shiny, brought here in the front, and a driver was hired to do it. They came here, and do you know what they did? They put a little sign in the window pretending they wanted the thing sold. They spent hundreds if not thousands of taxpayers' dollars for a cheap publicity stunt.