Mr. Speaker, I suggest to the hon. member opposite that there may be a profound misunderstanding, wilful or inadvertent, on the part of some members about what the ethics counsellor is or does.
I heard the hon. member refer to the ethics counsellor as an ethics commissioner. There is a very big difference. The opposition is clearly seeking someone who will be an enforcer, a policeman, a judge, someone who will do his or her job in enforcing a code of conduct or ethics. The ethics counsellor is none of those.
The ethics counsellor is a counsellor to those who are appointed, who are ministers, who are parliamentary secretaries, so that they can avoid the difficulties of conflict of interest and pre-empt difficult situations. That issue has been addressed back and forth today.
Let me put another issue to the hon. member. All of us in the House are busily holding forth on the issue of compliance with a code of conduct which would exist for ministers, for officeholders and for parliamentary secretaries. There is no code of conduct. For all of those here who are holding forth, there is no code of conduct for members of parliament. They are very willing to hoist upon the other officeholders a code of conduct, but not one element of a code of conduct applies to members in the House. That is business that we have to do.
Before we wax eloquent on what is missing in all of the other codes of conduct, I suggest we get our own House in order. I ask the member to comment on that.