Madam Speaker, I sat through this debate for most of the afternoon and you will forgive me if I sound a little cross every now and then because one of the things that bothers me deeply is the kind of debate we have in the House when the opposition, in their zeal to score points against the government, which is right and proper, but in their zeal it attacks parliament and the integrity of members of parliament rather than attacking the government and this is the case in point. They have it all mixed up and very seriously confused. They have mixed up the issue of public service accountability and the accountability of members of parliament.
The very pith of their motion is that they have gone to the Liberal red book of 1993 and brought out a paragraph that deals with the creation of an ethics counsellor. They have taken that paragraph and put it in their motion. The motion says that the House adopt the red book policy that says:
—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.
It goes on to say that the ethics counsellor will be answerable to the House of Commons.
They are having a little problem in reading. That which I just stated makes no mention whatsoever of ministers or members of parliament. Yet the debate throughout the entire day, not just with one opposition party but with other opposition parties, has been primarily targeting in on ministerial responsibility and ministerial accountability. I might point out that the opposition members have very conveniently glossed over the question of MPs' accountability. They all should know that there is in fact no code of conduct for members of parliament.
Let us just consider that for a moment. If we want a code of conduct for members of parliament, to whom do those members of parliament answer to?
I think the key to this debate, to understanding what the real issue is or what the real issue is not, is the reply that the Canadian Alliance member for Edmonton Southwest made to my question earlier in the debate. I asked him whether he felt that MPs should be subject to a code of conduct and whether they should report to an external person such as an ethics commissioner who would be responsible for policing that code of conduct.
The member for Edmonton Southwest is a new member. Probably because he is a new member of the Canadian Alliance, he was capable of replying with more candour than is normal for the more veteran members of the Canadian Alliance. What he said in reply to my question was that in his view the best way to have control of parliamentarians was by the voters themselves and that we were directly responsible to the voters themselves as parliamentarians.
That raises an interesting issue because there are things that we might say as MPs. We might ask whether we are always ethical. Certainly there are issues that affect us as MPs which raise ethical questions. Some of those ethical questions may pertain to how we deal with people who come to our riding offices and seek favours. Those are real problems sometimes.
Individual MPs sometimes have to search their conscience. They also have to ask themselves when they defend someone who comes to their riding for some government grant or another, they also have to search their conscience and ask whether they have done due diligence on that person. If they have not done due diligence and are supporting someone then theoretically they have made an ethical breach.
It is the same with other members. For instance, I know of one member no longer in the House, so I can probably safely make reference to him. He and other members too, in fairness, were inclined from time to time to take trips that were sponsored sometimes by foreign governments and in other instances by corporations. It is a very real question in some of our minds.
We do not all share the same opinion, but I can say as a former journalist that to take trips sponsored by a corporation or a foreign government was absolutely against the rules. As a former journalist with the Toronto Star , we had a code of ethics, a code of conduct in a thick book which governed everything from what kind of gifts we could accept, how expensive those gifts could be, and absolutely condemned taking favours from corporations and foreign governments or anything else like that.
This is a question that could be before individual MPs, but if we were to poll individual MPs I think we would find tremendous variation in approach to what is ethical and what is not in this very fine area of whether or not we should listen to our constituents and what pressures or what favours we should take from lobbyists. It is a serious problem.
The government did try to address it with the Lobbyist Registration Act. I was around when the Lobbyist Registration Act came forward in committee. It is due to come forward again. I am glad it is coming back for re-examination because I never liked it then; it was an inadequate piece of legislation. Even so legislation was directed wholly toward the activities of lobbyists vis-à-vis civil servants.
This is where we come back to the point that they are trying to make. Of course we have to have rules that govern the way lobbyists approach civil servants. It is a serious problem in all governments when special interest groups with money bypass the political process and reach directly into the bureaucracy. That was a dreadful problem under the Conservative regime prior to 1993. It was the subject of some books that would make one's hair curl.
The red book commitment was to bring public servants under a code of conduct and to advise public officials and lobbyists on standards of behaviour. We did that. We came out with a conflict of interest and post-employment code. I have it here. I am not allowed to show things in front of the camera, but however I can assure people it is many pages long. It describes in exquisite detail the responsibility of public officials. However, it does not apply to members of parliament.
There is a fundamentally good reason why it does not apply to members of parliament. Members of parliament are here to be lobbied. We are here so that people will approach us. We are here to listen to the people. We are here to listen to our constituents. It is precisely the process of a democracy.
We then ask ourselves why not have a code of conduct for members of parliament? When this issue came up about five or six years ago, a joint House of Commons and Senate committee was struck to study the issue of a code of conduct for members of parliament. If it exists for journalists and public servants, why should it not exist for members of parliament?
That joint committee deliberated for many months and I would like to think it had on it some of the most powerful talent on the Hill. It concluded in the end that no code of conduct can apply to members of parliament because members are ultimately responsible to the voters. The voters measure the integrity of members of parliament.
The irony to that conclusion is it is precisely what the member for Edmonton Southwest said in reply to my question.
That is another thing that distresses me sometimes. I have been in the House for seven years. Whether there is or is not a code of for MPs, I am willing to assure everyone in Canada who is watching that this is one of the finest collection of individuals with the highest level of integrity one could find in any corner of the land.
That is why I was upset by the allusions made by the member for Prince Albert who suggested in this place that members are not working in the best interests of not only their constituents, but in the best interests of the nation. I have been here and have seen only people who work very hard. I have only seen people who always search their consciences to determine if they are doing the right thing.
It is sometimes difficult when a member is in his or her constituency office and people approach and ask for help or the mayor asks to get a company into the riding because if it does not go into the riding there will be unemployment. One has to balance these things.
I say in absolute honesty that I do not know of a single member of the House who has in any way done something that I would have felt breached fundamental ethics or morals. People have dilemmas. They are not always sure what to do and whether it is always right. I believe that the members of the House, and this is the strength of the House, have always acted in good conscience and with good heart.
We now come back to the question of the ethics counsellor and the ministers and their relationship to the Prime Minister.
The reason why we cannot have the ethics counsellor accountable to parliament and speaking to parliament is for the same reason that we cannot have MPs reporting to an ethics counsellor who then reports to parliament.
We would have the ridiculous equation where MPs are reporting to a person who reports to MPs. Quite apart from that foolishness, the point is that ministers and the Prime Minister are members of parliament as well. They are accountable to the voters. In the end, the standards of ethics as perceived by the voters if disclosed in revelations by the opposition; if they have the goods on whatever ministers are doing then they disclose it in the House; and if the people feel that the behaviour of the ministers and indeed the behaviour of the Prime Minister is wanting then they have the opportunity to exercise the ultimate means of settling the matter. They can vote everyone out.
We are accountable; the Prime Minister is accountable and the ministers are accountable to the voters. It is the voters that determine the level of integrity in this place. We cannot conduct ourselves in a manner that is unacceptable to the voters and survive.
It was relevant in the debate today when allusions were made to the flip flops that had been done by the Canadian Alliance members with respect to the pensions that this is an ethical problem and it is an ethical problem that will be measured by the voters.
I could stand here for days and complain. After all the anger that was generated about fat pensions from the member for Edmonton Southwest and the member for Medicine Hat, do you know what happened in my riding, Madam Speaker, as a result of all that talk about gold plated pensions?
At one of my fall fairs I had a table with my Canadian flags and my brochures to meet the public. The Canadian Alliance, the Reform at that time, set up a table directly opposite me in the laneway in the fall fair. They had pigs there, little pink pigs, and labels that said “Sheila Copps”, “John Bryden” and “Bob Speller”. Underneath the labels they had $750,000 for me and $1.5 million for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
It was the most embarrassing thing imaginable because some 60,000 people go through the Rockton International Fair on a weekend. There they were promoting hatred for members of parliament. If ever there was a case where members of parliament have committed an ethical breach, it is those former Reform Party members who, after criticizing the pension in such a vicious fashion, have turned around and bought back into it.
This is not a question for an ethics commissioner. This is not a question for an ethics counsellor. They keep on confusing those terms. This is not a question of a code of conduct. This is a question that is going to be settled by the voters in their ridings.
That is the issue we are looking at today. The motion that they have before us is about the accountability of public servants. The government acted on the motion. There is no reason to support the motion because it is already done, but they have used the opportunity of a motion that is a misdirection to attack the Prime Minister, to attack the integrity of all members of parliament. I think that the people who will ultimately decide the fate of those on the other side who would make such groundless charges will be the voters.
