Mr. Speaker, it is enlightening to see you in the chair. I know the impartiality you bring to this place.
I want to pose a question to the hon. member with respect to his comments about the credibility and importance of an ethics counsellor. Reference has been made throughout this debate to various parties and to which party did what first. The hon. member's own party is not devoid of indiscretion or discrepancies.
I remind him of the former premier of British Columbia, Mr. Vander Zalm, who found himself in some difficulty. It resulted in a report published by Ted Hughes, a former deputy attorney general and superior court judge in Saskatchewan.
The report dealt with public land transactions and money that was then returned for a promise of a speculator acquiring adjacent properties. Federally owned oil companies were involved. All of this resulted in another premier from British Columbia resigning, Premier Harcourt. Although he was not personally implicated in the wrongdoing, he resigned after a forensic audit by an auditor he had appointed who found that party officials during the eighties had concocted a scheme to divert funds legally designed for charity into NDP coffers.
This demonstrates that the independent counsellors, the independent auditors, and in this case a former judge, were able to flesh out a situation that obviously was wrong.
Is the office of the ethics counsellor tainted by what has occurred in this situation? Should we be looking at a separate judge or special prosecutor to be assigned to cases like this one? He would be at arm's length from government. Perhaps he would be appointed by government but would not have that connection and therefore could credibly come before the Canadian people and lay out the facts so that there would be a credibility process.