Mr. Speaker, some members will remember the McGrath committee report. I was in the House when the report was tabled in 1985. I was not a member of the McGrath committee but the committee at the time made recommendations regarding the role of Parliament and government appointments.
It took a long time before the then prime minister, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, decided to establish such a rule, a rule that would provide for a mechanism by which parliamentary committees could review all non-judicial order in council appointments. The rule that we have now applies to deputy ministers, ambassadors, consuls general, and heads of most regulatory bodies and crown corporations. Canadians can be confident that the best appointments are being made by the government.
Those appointments have stood the test of scrutiny. In the vast majority of cases parliamentarians do not even ask for these people to appear before the parliamentary committee. Why? They are not questioning the competence of these people because they know that they are competent.
Earlier, the member opposite talked about the quality of appointees. He claimed that these people were appointed only because they were friends of the government.
On 134 occasions since 1993, we have advertised either in the Canada Gazette or in newspapers to try to recruit candidates for several positions that were subsequently filled through order-in-council appointments. Again that goes to show the great transparency of this government and of the Prime Minister, who has done such a good job on this issue and on all the other issues.
The motion in question is consistent with the Standing Orders. It essentially asks us to do that which we are doing. It is difficult for us to say that we are against that which we are doing already. I wonder why it is that the official opposition, perhaps not that party as much, refuses to have committees sit. It is on a work-to-rule campaign, working about 45 minutes a day during question period and refusing to do any other work around here.
Sooner or later the media and others will hold it to account for that and hopefully its constituents will also. In the name of so-called parliamentary modernization it has decided it does not want to work. How that constitutes modernization is beyond me. To that we can add that on the seven allotted days where our Standing Orders provide that the opposition can raise issues in the House of its liking, its solemn duty to air the grievances of the people before the sovereign as it were, we have today a motion repeating the existing Standing Orders of the House.
This is the best testimony, that we have had in a long time, that we are having good government in Canada. We cannot, even by offering an opposition day, convince the opposition to find something to criticize us. It has not been able to generate criticism of the government at all on a designated opposition day, a date that it has had for weeks. It has had weeks to think of something to criticize the government and after a week or more, what has it produced? It produced a motion that the House be in favour of a Standing Order that already exists. That is the only criticism of the government that it has been able to muster.
Of course I am in favour of the Standing Order that already exists and that has been used consistently without failure, according to the member for Mercier, the hon. member's seatmate in the House.
It is hard to understand but I am happy that the opposition, particularly the Bloc, does not have any particular criticism to direct at the government. In this day allotted to the Bloc to criticize the government, it has not found one single issue on which to criticize the government.
Instead it chose to propose a motion saying that certain provisions should be included in the Standing Orders, but these provisions already exist and are used constantly as another member of the Bloc, the member for Mercier, proudly pointed out.
We are pleased with the fact that members of the Bloc Quebecois have no criticism to express. They have nothing to say against the government. If they cannot find anything on which to criticize the government, they will certainly want to skip their turn in question period later today. In that case, our members will gladly take their place since they have several issues to raise, issues that Canadians want to see addressed in the House.
The Bloc motion that we have before us is a repetition of our existing Standing Orders and nothing else. It does not increase anything that we already have. It says that our traditions and conventions need to be upheld. This is a sign to me that the people across the way have been unable, after several days of research, to find one thing on which to criticize the government.
I am sure that my cabinet colleagues, our Prime Minister, and our caucus in its entirety, would thank them for this vote of confidence that they are expressing in this motion today.