Mr. Speaker, I share the view expressed by the member of the third party in this House that, to restore the integrity of our democratic institutions, the government has to stop making empty promises that mislead the public. I think that, as the member mentioned, the commitments made by the Liberal Party in its red book and what it is doing now as a government indicate clearly that, once again, we have a government that is constantly misleading the public with regard to certain commitments it made in the past and to the legislation it is introducing to supposedly honour these commitments.
It is not often that I have a chance to say this, but I agree with some of the things that the member said concerning the legislation itself. I understand that he was surprised to see some things in this bill that appeared to be good at first glance. If there is one thing that this government is to be given credit for, it is its ability to hide almost everything it does behind a smoke screen. It gives the impression that it is doing something, which is fairly important for a government. We have to recognize that it is one of this government's strengths. However, once we get through the smoke screen, we realize immediately that there is absolutely nothing behind it, and that is just awful.
The member mentioned this a few moments ago when he said that he was surprised to find in this bill some elements which seemed good at first glance but which, after a closer look, turned out to be just terrible. One example he gave, and rightly so, is the ethics counsellor. Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing to have an ethics counsellor. Yes, it is important. Yes, it is important to have investigations. That is what we see in Bill C-43. Yes, it is important to have some kind of report on these investigations. That is what the government is saying. But when we look closely at what is in the bill, we can see that the ethics counsellor is appointed by the Prime Minister, that his investigations are secret and that he will be only required to prepare a report including his findings, his conclusions and the reasons for his conclusions. That is all the proof we are going to have that he has done his job.
If that is not a smoke screen, then I do not know what it is. The Liberals say one thing and do the opposite. They want to be transparent, but there is no transparency in Bill C-43. They want to give credibility to their government, but Bill C-43 will certainly not do the trick. When will they listen to the opposition's demands? This is serious. The official opposition and the
third party moved more than 60 amendments to achieve the desired transparency. Sixty times, the government said no to transparency and no to integrity when we were just trying to help it stick to the promises it made during the election campaign.
I will conclude by asking a question of the hon. member, because I think that he has a very good understanding of the problems with Bill C-43. I now want to get back to the ethics counsellor. Let us suppose that that counsellor is appointed by Parliament and that his or her inquiry report on a specific case, for example the Pearson contract, if it were still an issue, contained not only conclusions, but also the rationale leading to these conclusions. Does the hon. member think that that would give us the transparency that Bill C-43 is supposed to bring to the system?