Mr. Speaker, I am greatly honoured to be able to speak on the information that has been given to Canadian people through the throne speech.
I read it with interest. I have to confess that I was one who did not go down to the Senate yesterday. I always think it is ironic. The Usher of the Black Rod comes from the Senate, bangs on the door and very solemnly declares that the people of the House are invited to the Senate to hear the Speech from the Throne. I have gone there five times, each throne speech until this one. I get to the door and they will not let me in. I think that is somehow wrong. I am a parliamentarian. I am here to represent around 100,000 people in the wonderful riding of Elk Island. It insults all of us.
What would happen if I asked my friends over for a social visit, then when they rang the doorbell I opened the door a crack, stood there for about 45 minutes and had a visit but never let them in? It is disrespectful and I think it is a symptom of what is wrong in this place, that is, parliamentarians are second class in terms of the parliamentary process. It is run as a top-down organization.
I would like to follow up somewhat on the speech that my colleague from St. Albert just gave. It had to do with ethical behaviour. I have a theory. I have developed it over a number of years. As members can tell, I am old enough to have developed a whole bunch of theories, many of which I have discarded, but some of them have endured. This one has endured because I have observed it during my lifetime and indeed in my own life, and that is that all behaviour, whether it is classified as ethical or unethical, good or bad, right or wrong, is driven or instructed by one's beliefs. If one believes something, that is how one is going to act.
I think of some unethical behaviour. For example, not long ago in a Canadian city which I will not identify, some young people jumped into a car, hot-wired it, made it go and went off for a ride in a car that was not theirs. Obviously their beliefs were that it did not matter, that somehow they were entitled to do this even though the vehicle belonged to someone else. Unfortunately the chase resulted in an accident with some injuries. It is very unfortunate that those people behaved that way because in their minds at that time they thought it was correct.
If I can make a huge leap here, the individuals who flew airplanes into buildings a little over a year ago believed at the time that it was okay. They were totally informed, or misinformed I might say. Their beliefs instructed their behaviour.
I wish we did not need to have this debate in the House. Realistically speaking, it should not be necessary. However, here we are in Canada's Parliament and one of our big functions here is to pass laws. I always say that certain laws are not necessary. For example, there should be no law necessary that states one shall not murder. To me that is self-evident. It is built into my moral structure. It is a belief I have which instructs my behaviour. I am not inclined to go around taking other people's lives, yet we see over and over again or on the news that people do this by whatever means and for whatever reasons. To me, it is the belief that drives the action. Why, then, do we have a law? It is against the law in Canada to commit murder. Why do we need that law? That law is needed in order to show people who do not have that belief built in what the standard is.
That is why the rules and the laws are required. I suppose it is one of the reasons we need a code of conduct for parliamentarians. Some people are ignorant of what is acceptable.
I do not know how I can make this leap politely so I will jump right into it. We often follow leadership in terms of what standards we accept. I have observed this in families and in my own children. They will generally adopt behaviour they have learned at home as acceptable and they will avoid behaviour which is demonstrated or which is taught by word as being unacceptable. Much to my regret, I have to point the finger right at the top leadership of the federal government that is presently governing this country. Why is it that we are embroiled in these debates on ethical behaviour? Why did it have to appear in the throne speech? It was because there has been a serious breach of ethical behaviour by the top members of the Liberal government and I would venture to say even as far as right to the Prime Minister.
I will give an example. When dealing with the issues in the Prime Minister's riding we demanded answers. We got runarounds, we got cover-up. On an opposition day, the official opposition moved a motion that there be an independent inquiry. The Prime Minister directed the cabinet ministers who in turn I guess sent the message to the whip who sent the message to the Liberal members. While every opposition member of the House voted in favour of an independent inquiry to look into the Shawinigan shenanigans, every member in the Liberal Party said, “No, we don't want an independent inquiry”. Frankly, I consider that an admission of guilt. That is very simple. It is not a large leap.
If I am innocent and somebody was proposing to investigate the occurrence, I would welcome it. I would say to do it as soon as possible and get it under way because if I am innocent, that inquiry will find me innocent . If it has the authenticity of being independent and not directed by the person who is being investigated, then it also has the ability to totally clear the name and exonerate the person who is under suspicion. The Prime Minister chose not to allow that inquiry, and he has killed a number of other inquiries.
I am sure in questions and comments someone will say that one could argue that perhaps it was an unnecessary expense or perhaps there might be other reasons. In something so serious, I think the money would have been very well spent. I believe that it was shut down because the government did not want to find the true facts in the issue.
I found an interesting quote:
Yet after nine years of [this government's] rule, cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process is at an all-time high.... This erosion of confidence seems to have many causes: some have to do with the behaviour of certain elected politicians, others with an arrogant style of political leadership.
That quotation, with one change, comes from the 1993 red book. It was nine years ago when we had had nine years of Conservative government. In order to add drama to the quotation, I omitted the word “Conservative”. In 2002 we could as easily change it to Liberal rule and ask what has changed.
It is interesting that the Liberals who were proposing to become the government at that time said, “We are going to clean this up”. Among other things, they promised to have an ethics commissioner, which by the way is based on exactly the same principle. The 1993 red book offered an independent ethics councillor for exactly the same reasons that I said the independent hearing was necessary. It would have given authenticity to a ruling whether it went one way or the other.
What did the government do? It gave us an ethics counsellor who reports to the Prime Minister and who would have to report to the very person under investigation in that issue. That is not acceptable.
We gave the government an opportunity to actually live up to its promise by making that very clause, word for word, a supply day motion. Again, every Liberal voted against it.
Mr. Speaker, you do not know how sorry I am that I am not the leader of the official opposition today. Then I would have had unlimited time and I could have carried on.