Mr. Speaker, I beg your indulgence as I am having trouble with my voice today. I guess I will not be able to do what some other members have done, which is to yell louder when the argument is weak. Since I will not be able to do that today, I had better make sure my arguments are solid. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from St. Albert.
I have a very difficult chore today. Actually I am asking for a miracle. My chore is to persuade enough Liberal members to vote for the motion. I think that all or most opposition members will vote in favour of the motion. My chore is to persuade enough Liberal members that the motion has sufficient merit to vote for.
The reason my chore is so difficult is that the Prime Minister, who is actually the subject of the motion today, has the authority by the traditions of the House to tell those members how to vote. I have an idea. I do not have any evidence for it, but I have a strong suspicion that all Liberals on command will vote against the motion. I am aware that the vote has been deferred and will be held tomorrow night. We will see what happens.
We should begin by looking directly at what the amended motion says. It would state:
That this House calls for the immediate establishment of an independent judicial inquiry to determine if the Prime Minister is in breach of conflict of interest rules regarding his involvement with the Grand-Mère Golf Club and the Grand-Mère Inn; and that the inquiry should have broad terms of reference with the power to subpoena all relevant documents and witnesses.
I will now argue in favour of the motion. Many of the speeches today on both sides of the House have been arguing the various aspects of the case, which I believe should be argued in front of an independent judicial committee.
What has happened so far is that accusations have been made from this side that the opposite side vehemently denies or refuses to answer. As a matter of fact, from my point of view it adds credence to the suggestion that there is guilt on the other side. When one evades the answer it is because the answer is self-indicting. I should not use quite that strong a term, but that is what happens.
When we ask questions of members on the other side, whether it is the Minister of Industry or the Prime Minister himself, they do not answer the questions at all. They talk about something else.
It actually reminded me of when I was a youngster decades ago. I remember one in vogue joke that was going around. It was a little riddle that asked how many flapjacks it took to shingle the roof of a doghouse. The answer was 24 because a cow does not have feathers. If you can make sense of that, Mr. Speaker, I will give you the highest mark. It was just the weird sense of humour we had in Saskatchewan when we were youngsters.
However the House can see my analogy is that the answer had no relevance at all to the question. Even the question did not make any sense. Who knows anything about using flapjacks to shingle the roof of a doghouse? Both the question and the answer were nonsensical.
Liberal members say our questions are nonsensical and so they give nonsensical answers. On the other hand we think our questions have great merit. We ask our questions, but the perception on the other side is that they are nonsensical questions and therefore deserve nonsensical answers. Then we hear the nonsensical answers and we say they totally evade the facts.
I appeal to about 50 Liberals today. I know I will not get them all. They say they trust the Prime Minister. They believe he is clean in this matter. They are tired of this mess. Therefore they feel it is high time to put this matter to rest and to make sure it is put to rest they need somebody who is independent.
I was involved in the joint House of Commons-Senate committee in the 35th parliament where we talked about producing a code of ethics for parliamentarians, for MPs and senators. I had quite a bit of experience at that time. We were talking even then about the necessity of having an independent ethics commissioner, which is vastly different from the ethics counsellor we have now.
It just so happens that in the 1993 election campaign the Liberals campaigned on having an independent ethics counsellor, one who would report to parliament as the auditor general reports to parliament. Instead we got a non-independent ethics counsellor.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister actually quoted me when I said that we trusted Howard Wilson. He is a good man. I probably said that. I know that was my thinking at the time. I presumed he quoted accurately that part of my speech.
Even at that time I was adamant that person should be independent of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has shown over and over again an almost unseemly level of loyalty to his ministers. I do not know whether it is at the Prime Minister's instigation or whether they did it by themselves, but I think of the minister of immigration who during the election campaign said things that were totally untrue. She laid accusations at the feet of members of our party that were just not accurate. Did he hold her accountable for that? No.
The same could be said for the junior minister responsible women's issues and whatever else. I do not remember all of her title. She also has made statements lately that categorize people in a most unseemly way. The Prime Minister stands and defends that person.
The Prime Minister says that his ministers can pretty well do anything they want and that his job is to defend them because the Liberal Party can never make mistakes. That weakens the position of the counsellor. Even if the ethics counsellor says things which are accurate, they are not believed because of the relationship the counsellor has with the Prime Minister.
Many people believe that part of the role of the ethics counsellor is to be on the damage control team. That is very unfortunate and neutralizes a lot of the benefit that we could have if we had a true, independent ethics commissioner with the right to look up documents and to ask people to give accurate information. Instead, we have an ethics counsellor who occasionally conducts media interviews but other than that answers only to the Prime Minister.
It is interesting that the ethics counsellor questions his role. I was intrigued to read in some notes that were prepared for us that he gave a speech in Australia a little over a year ago. It is interesting that when asked about his role he basically said that he had no legal status and no powers of investigation. He answers only to the Prime Minister and sees himself as his defender. He said in his speech in Australia in February 1999:
The system has evolved so that I would be expected to publicly defend the decisions of ministers. I have had to do so to explain the Prime Minister's interests in a golf course.
Basically he was saying that because of his relationship with the Prime Minister he was expected to do that.
I appeal to Liberal members that we do not have an independent ethics commissioner. We have an ethics counsellor. We basically have a spitting match between opposite sides of the story, even between the different media. The Globe and Mail says one thing. The Toronto Star joins in and then the National Post says just the opposite. We are all talking to one another.
It is time that we have an independent judicial inquiry as proposed in the motion so that it is able to get at the truth by having the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents and that when it gives its report it will be believable because it is truly independent.