Mr. Speaker, I am not sure the Canadian public will be happy to hear that we now have patronage budgets for ministers.
The President of the Treasury Board keeps saying that he conducted a thorough investigation into these contracts. The investigation was a joke. Whom did he ask? He asked Department of National Defence officials if they followed Treasury Board guidelines and to everyone's surprise, they said yes. It is like asking the fox to mind the chicken coup.
Given these blatant abuses and conflicts of interest, why has the ethics counsellor not been called in to look at this matter?