Mr. Speaker, this is a subject which is very important to Canadian people. It has been one that has consumed me in my parliamentary life since I was elected in 1993.
Some hon. members here are new, so they may not know that in the previous parliament I was the Reform Party member on the special joint committee which studied a code of ethics for senators and members of parliament. Of course, as we all know, members of parliament include senators. We are all included in the term. I had the extraordinary privilege of serving on that committee.
Needless to say, it is another of those issues which is not black and white. It is not a simple issue. It is a very complicated issue in terms of what it is that we require public officers, cabinet ministers and, indeed, even ordinary members of parliament to disclose. Generally, the principle, in my view, is that there should be no hidden features of one's life.
I remember when I was a young man and my wife and I moved into a little town in Alberta. There were some 200 people in that town and some people said to me “How can you stand to live in that little town? Everybody knows what you are doing”. I said “I don't plan on doing anything bad, so it doesn't matter”.
That really is the essence of it. Generally speaking, people only want to have secrets if they are going to do something bad.
However, I am aware that there are exceptions. When people have business dealings, for example, sometimes there are things they do not want their competitors to know. That is valid. However, we have a rule in this country that members of parliament who become cabinet ministers have a higher code. They must divest themselves of their interests. They may not directly deal with government.
We have had a couple of issues with the Liberal government since 1993 which have consumed us and have really put into question the whole integrity of it. We have had a few issues lately with the Prime Minister himself.
I remember in the previous parliament a situation where there was an inappropriate use of a credit card by a cabinet minister. That puzzled me endlessly. If a person has credit card statements which prove that what they did was not wrong, why would they not disclose them?
We asked for them under access to information and they were denied. In fact, they were not denied. We got pages and pages of blank paper. The heading was at the top and then everything was whited out. Then there was a little code that said we could not have the information because it was personal.
That was the point exactly. A public credit card was being used for personal reasons, but we could not find out the details. It was really very bad.
It seems to me that one would be eager to disclose. That is what I said to reporters at the time because I was grilled on this. I said that the easiest thing in the world would be to simply bring out all of the statements. They are all on record. Bring them out and make copies of them. Show the reporters the originals. Let them have a copy of them. Here it is. There is nothing wrong. But as long as they are not disclosed, then the suspicion remains and there are all kinds of protestations.
They went through this motion of tabling stuff in the House. When we looked at what they tabled, it had no relevance at all to the question. It was just a snow job, if you will pardon the expression.
Now we have the question about the Prime Minister's code of ethics for his ministers. This is a very important issue. We know that it exists. We know that we have not seen it. It is not the public office holders' code, which is public. The reason we know that is because in the debate with the Prime Minister over this issue at various times he has said “My ministers have seen it. They have read it. They understand it. They obey it”.
One cannot read nor understand that which does not exist. So we know that it exists. There was also a very clear indication that it was not just simply the public office holders' code.
What this motion for the production of papers calls for is simply that the code be made public. For the life of me, I do not know why anybody on this side of the House, whose job it is to hold the government accountable, would be against this motion. Of course we want to know what that code is.
I would think that every Liberal member on the other side who really believes in the Liberal red book and its promises to increase integrity in government would also want to vote in favour of this motion. Of course they would want to have openness in government. They would want the people of Canada to know what the rules of engagement are for ministers of the crown. That is an essential part of rebuilding the trust of government.
We have had some 30 years of Liberal and Conservative governments where the integrity of government has been questioned by Canadians. That is why there is so much cynicism. I think that is one of the reasons less than 50% of the people turned out in the recent byelection. They are so cynical that they say “What difference does it make?” It is time we restored to Canadians faith, trust and confidence in the integrity of the Canadian government.
I urge all members on both sides of the House to vote in favour of this most important motion. It is probably one of the most important motions that we will debate this evening.