Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question.
In terms of what framework a public inquiry could take, there have been a couple of suggestions made already. One suggestion was made by the Canadian Alliance. The member for Calgary—Nose Hill suggested earlier that we could have an inquiry made up of equal numbers of members of parliament from each of the five parties, so there would not be any partisanship. That is something which could be agreed to by all parties in the House.
I would think that another framework could be to have something completely outside the involvement of members. That might involve someone from the judiciary, or a panel of civilians, or people who have a lot of credibility in the community, but again on the basis that there would be an all-party agreement. As we know, it is very easy to appoint friends to such places and say it is independent.
I have a brief response in terms of the code of conduct. What we have said in our report, and I would urge the member to look at the report, is that we believe a code of conduct should be developed by treasury board and should include a number of principles concerning the disbursement of grants and contributions: that disbursements should be made in a way that is transparent, that there should be full disclosure, that there should be fairness, and most important, that there be a standard practice. What we envisage is that this would be developed as a document which departments would be required to live by in terms of making decisions about awarding grants and contributions.
I do not think it is mutually exclusive to a member of parliament having some involvement in that. One of the things that has been suggested by witnesses is that there could be advisory committees in local areas.
We want the departments to live by this kind of code so that we do not have this kind of scandal in the future.