Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday the Prime Minister set loose the dogs of war. He has taken the leash off the cabinet ministers seeking to replace him and is allowing them to campaign for his job.
Being a cabinet minister is a fulltime position and a very heavy responsibility, but it is not, as the Prime Minister suggests, whether or not ministers can walk and chew gum at the same time. It is the fact that ministers angling for the leader's job are simply in a conflict of interest.
A few months ago the Prime Minister said that if ministers wanted to campaign, all they had to do was resign. He even fired his former finance minister when he refused to stop campaigning but apparently now those rules no longer apply. Why the double standard?
In the recent Canadian Alliance leadership race, our party led by example when the member for Okanagan--Coquihalla, the member for Macleod and the member for Calgary--Nose Hill all resigned their critic portfolios and other responsibilities so they could campaign fulltime for the leader's role.
It is clear that the right and honourable thing to do would be for those ministers to step down from their posts and campaign to their heart's content. To try to do two fulltime jobs at once does a disservice to their roles as ministers and an even greater disservice to the Canadian public.