moved for leave to introduce Bill C-299, entitled Parliamentarians' Code of Conduct.
Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to say a few words about my private member's bill to establish a code of conduct for parliamentarians.
It provides for an ethics counsellor who would report directly to parliament and would do so annually. Such legislation exists in every province and territory in the country and in many other countries that have parliamentary systems similar to that of Canada.
It is clear that we need such conflict of interest legislation and such a code of conduct to prevent the further erosion of confidence in parliament as an institution and to restore confidence that parliamentarians will act not with conflict of interest but with the public interest at heart.
I know I do not have time to outline it in detail, but the attempt to get such a code of conduct into parliament has had a long history, including a committee which our current Speaker co-chaired.
In conclusion, my former colleague from Halifax West introduced a similar bill not once but twice in the previous session of parliament. If the government had seen fit to follow the lead of Gordon Earle in this matter, we might have been spared the unseemly spectacle of the swirl around the Shawinigan affair and the defamation matter that has surrounded the official opposition.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)