Madam Speaker, I just want to say that this is an historic day in that we are into the new rules. It is a real step forward. Typically the questions are pre-scripted as are the answers and often they are at cross purposes, so having a little bit of debate in the second round is very profitable. This is after all a place where debate is supposed to be the key to our decision making.
I am rising today in the House to address the role of the office of the ethics counsellor, the official responsible for supervising the integrity and the ethical conduct of the federal government and individual ministers of the crown.
The mandate of the ethics counsellor is chiefly to guard against conflicts of interest and abuses of power by cabinet ministers. In fact before 1993 the Mulroney government seemed to be so rife with scandal and conflicts of interest that a total of nine ministers resigned under a cloud, or perhaps under several clouds.
At that time, as leader of the opposition, our current Prime Minister demanded a very high degree of accountability from the ministers in the Tory government. If there was ever a mistake or a scandal in the department, the Prime Minister demanded the resignation of the relevant minister. I quote the right hon. Prime Minister, speaking on June 12, 1991. He said:
When we form the government, every minister in the cabinet that I will be presiding over will have to take full responsibility for what is going on in his department. If there is any bungling in the department.... The minister will have to take responsibility.
This attitude of responsibility was repeated in the Liberal election platform of 1993. I quote again:
A Liberal government will appoint an independent Ethics Counsellor to advise both public officials and lobbyists in the day-to-day application of the Code of Conduct for Public Officials. The Ethics Counsellor will be appointed after consultation with the leaders of all parties in the House of Commons and will report directly to Parliament.
Let us take a look at what happened after the 1993 election.
The current ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, was appointed on June 16, 1994, to investigate allegations against government ministers and senior officials involved in apparent conflicts of interest or lobbying but was directed to report his findings in secret to the Prime Minister and not in public to parliament. Furthermore, we are told that he operates according to an official code of conduct yet that code, if it exists, has never been made public.
Over the past six and a half years the ethics counsellor has found only one breach of ethics on the part of a government minister. The current transport minister was forced to resign in 1996 as minister of defence over a letter that he had sent to the Immigration and Refugee Board lobbying on behalf of a resident of his constituency.
Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence, the ethics counsellor has completely cleared the Prime Minister of any wrongdoing in the Shawinigate scandal. He cleared the finance minister over the Canada Steamship Lines contract scandal in which contracts were awarded to ship coal for Devco, a federal crown corporation. He cleared the finance minister over his involvement in the Canada Development Corporation and the tainted blood scandal. He cleared the youth minister for using a government credit card to purchase a fur coat for herself. He also cleared an aid to the defence minister who was lobbying on behalf of a firm seeking a $600 million defence contract.
At best, the lack of independence of the office of the ethics counsellor calls into question the validity of his findings. At worst, we have an ethics watchdog who is appointed by the Prime Minister to uphold ethics but who is really being used by the Prime Minister to whitewash unethical behaviour in his cabinet.
This past February, when the Canadian Alliance proposed a motion to adopt 1993 Liberal reforms calling for an independent ethics commissioner who reports to parliament rather than to the back rooms of the government, Liberal backbenchers voted against the proposition.
My question for the hon. government House leader is the following. Will the government ever reform the role of ethics counsellor and make it a position appointed by parliament, responsible to parliament and with the tools to expose scandal rather than to cover it up?