Mr. Speaker, I must agree with the hon. member who just spoke. There are a lot of semantics and careful, niggling little words being used in characterizing the office.
It is clear that the intent in the red book was to bring about accountability. The hon. member knows well about accountability. He very much makes it his passion in this place. He is the fiscal thistle who often brings out barbs of information against the government and its accountability to the House and to Canadians.
I want to put to the member the chronology of how things have unfolded. The Prime Minister owned a property. The Prime Minister sold the property. The property sale did not go through, therefore in some form it came back to him. It may have been in a blind trust, but it was a blind trust with a lot of peripheral vision. However, during the time that the property was not sold, when it was in an inbetween, purgatory stage, the Prime Minister was making representations to the Business Development Bank to assist an individual, well known by the Prime Minister, in the sale of a property adjoining his own that would therefore enhance the value of the property held by the Prime Minister.
Is this perception or reality? Is this not a conflict of interest that should be viewed by an individual with impartiality, not connected to the Prime Minister in any way, shape or form? That is what is at the crux of the issue that has led to this debate.
Does the hon. member have a comment with respect to the perception of the public in the chronology that I have just laid out?