Madam Speaker, I was reading from a text. That is why I departed from the rule. “Nonetheless, the Minister of Finance sponsored this bill and certain members have expressed the view that this constitutes an apparent conflict of interest”.
The hon. member opposite is not reading the same documents we read on February 17, 1998. If the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is so certain that the minister is not in conflict of interest, why, when we asked the Standing Committee on Finance to hear witnesses on this state of affairs, was our request to hear from the ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, the only one granted, but all our other requests turned down?
This is why we in the Bloc Quebecois and the opposition parties are once again raising the issue, because we feel that the word has gone out across the way not to shed light on this matter. A finance minister in a situation such as this must tell the truth.