Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Motion No. 2 at report stage of Bill C-28.
The motion addresses the perceived conflict of interest the hon. Minister of Finance finds himself in with respect to certain provisions of the bill, principally article 241 which would change the tax treatment of shipping companies.
It is well known to members of this place and the public that the Minister of Finance holds through a blind trust principal ownership of Canada Steamship Lines, a major international shipping company. Members of the opposition have raised the question as to whether or not he may be in a conflict of interest by having acted as the sponsor of this bill.
Let me say at the outset that I believe the hon. Minister of Finance is a honest and diligent member of this place and is deserving of respect. Even though I often disagree with him, I personally do not believe that the Minister of Finance acted as the sponsor of this bill in order to derive any kind of personal financial benefit. I rather suspect, given the nature of his responsibilities, that he likely never read the bill. I suspect very few members of the House have actually read a technical tax bill such as this one. What we read are summaries provided to us by either the department or by our research staffs. Oftentimes those summaries do not stipulate a particular provision such as article 241. It is entirely plausible that the Minister of Finance was not aware that article 241 posed a potential conflict of interest for him.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon ministers, when they bring bills forward to parliament, that they be well and thoroughly advised about the contents of such legislation. They should know whether or not they may find themselves in a potential conflict position vis-à-vis their own personal business interests and whether or not those interests are managed through a blind trust. In this case it would appear to me that the Minister of Finance was let down by his advisers, by his bureaucrats who recommended that he act as the principal sponsor of the bill but who did not flag, did not highlight, did not emphasize the potential conflict between his private business interests and article 241 which deals with the tax treatment of shipping companies.
Rather than simply dismissing the criticism which opposition members have levelled at the finance minister out of hand as he has done, rather than suggesting that this is some kind of mean-spirited smear campaign, I suggest the government members, and the Minister of Finance in particular, should take to heart in a constructive way the criticism that has been levelled with respect to this perceived conflict.
The minister should go to his officials, if he has not already done so, and say “You have put me in a very embarrassing position by giving me bad advice. I should not have acted as the principal sponsor of this bill”.
Another minister, say the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions could easily have brought the bill forward. The Minister of National Revenue could have brought this bill forward. The Minister of Finance should have gone to his officials and said, “You gave me bad advice. There was clearly at least a perceived conflict here between myself and this legislation. My name ought not therefore to have been that of the sponsor of the bill”, and somebody should be held to account.
That is really the issue I want to address. It is one of ministerial accountability. It is a principle which is absolutely central to the traditions of Parliament.
We have inherited from our mother Parliament in Great Britain a remarkable institution. It is an institution where the executive branch of the government represents the authority of the crown and has the enormous power of the state vested in it. Police powers, taxing powers and military powers are vested in the executive branch. In this case they are manifested in the cabinet, the governor in council. Members of the cabinet have a fiduciary responsibility to this legislative body to ensure that they are never even in a perceived conflict between their ministerial responsibilities, their responsibilities on behalf of the crown, and their business affairs as private citizens. They also have a profound responsibility to this legislature and to the people that we as MPs represent to take responsibility for what happens in their departments.
I am greatly disturbed by the increasing pattern of ministerial unaccountability, where we find instances like this which come to the surface where ministers refuse to take responsibility for what admittedly may be bad advice given to them by their bureaucrats, but advice which they accept and for which they ought to be held accountable.
If the ministers are not held accountable, who is? The ministers represent their bureaucracies, their departments, which are creatures of this legislature. If they slough off responsibility and they say, “It was just an error. It was just a mistake. It was a small oversight. I cannot be answerable for it. My bureaucrats cannot be answerable for it”, then what is the point of having this Parliament? Why not just have an executive branch of government that is answerable to no one?
That is the ultimate logical conclusion of this kind of incremental diminishment of the principle of ministerial responsibility and accountability which ought to have been much more clearly respected by the Minister of Finance in responding to the criticism levelled at him with respect to Bill C-28.
It is not just Bill C-28 where we see a recent example of conflict of interest. In this House in recent days the official opposition has raised the very troubling example of the recent appointment to the Senate of a certain Ross Fitzpatrick by the Right Hon. Prime Minister. I do not know Mr. Fitzpatrick. I have no reason to believe that he is anything but an honourable, diligent and loyal Canadian citizen. I have no reason to believe he will not be a hard working and responsible senator, fulfilling his constitutional responsibilities.
However, it is a fact that Mr. Fitzpatrick was chairman of the board of a corporation on which the current Prime Minister sat as a director. It is furthermore a fact that the Right Hon. Prime Minister, when he was a private citizen in 1987, exercised a stock option which was given to him by Senator Fitzpatrick which generated a personal profit of $45,000 in the space of one week. It is furthermore a fact that when initially questioned about this stock deal, initially questioned about his corporate position on the Viceroy Resources Board, the Right Hon. Prime Minister claimed that he had received no compensation.
I know the rules of this place and would never suggest that the Prime Minister has misled the House. But the facts show a very clear incongruity between the reality and what the Prime Minister said. It is another shocking example of where we see a perceived, if not real, conflict of interest which government members just expect us to walk away from.
I know there are members on that side who were once in opposition. I know that if Prime Minister Mulroney had appointed the chairman of a board on which he served and from which he received a substantial financial benefit that Liberal members of Parliament in opposition would have raised a bloody furore that never would have stopped until somebody's head was on a platter. I say good on them because the role of an opposition party is to hold the government to account.
I was in the Liberal Party in 1987. Every single person in the Liberal Party, every political observer in the country, knew that the Prime Minister, who was then a private citizen, was likely to run again for political office. He received a personal financial benefit. It is clearly, in my view, a conflict of interest for him to have appointed to the Senate somebody from whom he received a personal financial benefit.
These examples carry on. Just today we raised another case of a former employer of the Prime Minister who received a remunerative government patronage position.