Madam Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague, the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, for bringing forward this important motion. This is a topic that has garnered the attention of many people across the country and obviously of all members of parliament, because as elected people in the country who are representing our constituents we want to provide leadership.
We have seen some examples of difficulties with ethical behaviour or the appearance of conflict in regard to the Prime Minister's dealings in Shawinigan, which is well documented and which I will be touching on.
I spent 10 years as a teacher before I became a member of parliament. I know that there was a very well defined code of conduct that we had as educators who are put in positions of trust working with children, parents, colleagues and different levels of the administration. If that code of conduct was compromised, of course there were some very serious consequences.
It is worth revisiting this notion of having a code of conduct for members of parliament. We would hope that there would be sound judgment used by all members at all times and that such a debate would not be necessary, but it seems as though some examples have brought this forward again and there does need to be a code of conduct.
I want to touch on a particular example that was brought to my attention regarding the actions of one of our current colleagues, that being the member for Waterloo—Wellington, in his riding during the recent federal election. He is a parliamentary secretary. He represents a minister of the crown. He wrote a letter during the campaign which was viewed as very inappropriate by members of his own community. I will not go into all of the specifics, but perhaps I will highlight some of the things the community mentioned.
The member for Waterloo—Wellington wrote a letter which residents of the Morningside Retirement Village in New Hamburg in his riding were very concerned about. In fact, they were shocked that such a provocative letter from the incumbent member would come forward. In fact, I will quote directly from a member of the community. Maryjean Brown, the director of a retirement complex within the community, said “I couldn't believe that kind of letter could be read at that kind of gathering of people”.
Basically what happened was that the member of parliament wrote a letter attacking some of the members of this retirement community for some of their alleged responses to somebody who worked for him.
I will quote from the letter the member wrote. He stated:
The reason I raise this with you is because we discreetly followed half of these men and were astounded to discover they were residents of Morningside.
He went on to say that he understands that most of the residents are “decent, law-abiding, God-fearing and kind individuals” but then said:
Next time this occurs, I will be pressing charges against these weak and hideous men under the Ontario Human Rights Code, and will be happy to make their name or names national headlines across Canada.
This was something one of our colleagues wrote in a letter on his parliamentary secretary letterhead to people in his community during the election campaign, which the people of the community viewed as very inappropriate. Obviously on the face of it, I think all of us would be surprised by such a thing. This was an issue that was brought forward during the campaign. Some of the people in the community commented on this and were quite surprised by this action. I will again quote again Ms. Brown, the director of the retirement village, who said:
If it had to be brought up, it should have been brought up by himself instead of sending somebody else to do his dirty work. Everybody here is very, very upset about it.
He had this letter read at a public meeting rather than attending himself.
This is a very specific example of a member who is one of our colleagues and who used his privileges as a parliamentary secretary in a way which many would deem to be inappropriate. If members have difficulty with lack of judgment in this kind of example, then I think it is a thing we need to discuss as members, because we need to be showing leadership in this area.
I will turn from that unfortunate incident to talk a bit about the Shawinigan affair. I will also rebut a few of the comments made by my colleague, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, when he talked about the ethics counsellor.
My colleague for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough gave a good summary of the ethics counsellor debate that we had not long ago and how the government voted down a promise in its own red book. It was a motion brought forward by the Alliance and supported by all members in the House.
My colleague from the government side mentioned that the ethics counsellor does report to parliament. What he neglected to point out was that he reports to parliament at committee when called as a witness for estimates or some other thing. What my colleague did not say, because it is not the case, is that reports by the ethics counsellor are not tabled in the House of Commons. The ethics counsellor does not report directly to parliament on any investigations or provide any information, such as was brought forward with the Shawinigan case.
The Canadian Alliance had a motion before the House that would have required the ethics counsellor to report to the House and to table reports in the House so that all members could be made aware of the facts. It would have been a far greater thing for members of cabinet to be cleared of any wrongdoing. If all documents and reports were tabled before the House and there was no wrongdoing there would be no wondering about what was in the report. It would be a good thing.
We certainly could not understand why the government defeated our motion, which was, in large part I believe, some of my Conservative colleague's motivation for bringing forward his motion today. We need to have a debate about ethical conduct in the House of Commons.
It is unfortunate that the circumstances surrounding the Prime Minister on a daily basis have not gone away and continue to percolate, even today in question period. Circumstances like that are ones that bring into question the ethical behaviour of members of parliament.
British Columbia has a very strict code of conduct for members of the legislative assembly. I have talked to some members of the provincial government who have told me that their code of conduct legislation states that even if there is an appearance of a conflict of interest an investigation will be done and, from what I understand, such reports are tabled in the provincial legislature. That is far different from the ethics counsellor process we have debated here today.
We should be considering some changes. If we want to restore confidence in this place in the minds and hearts of people, then we need to work together on many issues in the House. We have done that on some occasions in this parliament already. We did so on the motion in regard to the sex offender registry, which we voted on this week. In large part, we had agreement today in the softwood lumber debate. We did not have the same agreement on the ethics counsellor motion, which was unfortunate because it was designed to restore confidence in the minds of those we govern that we are serious about ethical behaviour.
Members of the Alliance Party will continue to work together to find ways to solve important issues in this place. I commend my colleague for bringing forward this important motion.