Madam Speaker, I have some preliminary comments on the matter.
I am a new member of the House. Many voters told me in the last election that I was wasting my time coming to the House. In their view, their members of parliament did not have an effective voice or say in the government of this country. Many of them did not believe they were on the bus. They were not in the back seat. They were on the outside looking in.
Many of our academic people today have examined our parliamentary system and know it very well. Basically, their conclusion is that we are creating a system of government which is presidential and does not really have any effective checks or balances built into it. Mr. Diefenbaker many years ago pointed out some of the things that were happening in the House.
I come to the House with an open mind. I come here with the idea that we, as members of parliament, can improve the system of government, and I will give it a fair trial. However, I come to the House with a lot of doubts in my mind. Some of the things I heard this afternoon only confirm some of my worst beliefs about this place.
The question that I would like to start off with is; can Mr. Wilson, the ethics counsellor, given the process established by the Prime Minister's office, truly carry out this mandate in an impartial, objective and independent manner? In no way do I question this individual's integrity in any way. I believe Mr. Wilson to be an honourable and decent individual. However, it has been my experience in life that a system dictates the results. Excellent systems create excellent results, average systems create mediocre results and bad systems produce poor results.
In my view the process that has been established to investigate and report on serious wrongdoings by the Prime Minister or the ministers is a flawed, poor system. People who work in a poor system are helpless to deal with that system and to affect the result.
I intend to point out some of the obvious defects with the system which have been created. First, the Prime Minister's office has established the code of conduct for the Prime Minister and the ministers. This is like asking the hockey coach to make up the rule book.
Second, the ethics commissioner is hired by the Prime Minister's office and in all apparent respects is placed in a position of master-servant with the Prime Minister being the master. Once the ethics counsellor is finished with the allegation, he reports directly to the boss, the master, who is the subject matter of the very investigation. The ethics counsellor is not directly accountable to the men and women who have been elected to the House to govern the country.
There is a very old saying in our justice system, and I am sure all members have heard it before; not only must justice be done, it must appear to be done. Because of a very flawed process, thousands upon thousands of Canadians do not believe in the integrity of the findings of the ethics commissioner. They simply do not believe that those are correct results or an accurate assessment of what has taken place.
Much has been said about Saskatchewan. I am a member from Saskatchewan. Anybody from Saskatchewan would realize, based on our experience, that we have to prevent these sorts of abuses of power from occurring again. That means fixing the system and having a system in place that prevents those sorts of abuses of power.
In many respects the circumstances I heard in regard to this incident remind me of the sorts of incidents that occurred in Saskatchewan, but this is the Government of Canada. I think many people in Saskatchewan see many similarities in some of these circumstances. Everybody in the House should be concerned about those sorts of problems.
For this system to have the appearance of fairness and objectivity that people expect, the ethics counsellor must be dealing in a complete arm's length position, vis-à-vis the Prime Minister. It is fairly apparent that a person with that type of position should be very akin to a judge. He should have that sort of independence that we expect to find in our judiciary.
Those two points, as far as I am concerned, are not even close to being reality. I would encourage all members of the House to support this very worthy motion.