Mr. Speaker, with respect to the first part of the question on process and off the top of my head I do not recall the two countries that were referred to specifically in the report, but two Commonwealth countries have adopted different methods.
One of them, I believe it might be Great Britain, has some kind of a commissioner of appointments. When an appointment is required to a board of a crown corporation or an appointment of a CEO, this commissioner is involved. He functions in an open and transparent fashion and reports to parliament, certainly not just to the Prime Minister as is the case of the ethics counsellor in Canada. Our Prime Minister appoints an ethics counsellor who answers only to him. It is like having his own little lapdog who is not accountable to parliament at all.
I might add that with respect to the scandals surrounding all these crown corporations and the department of public works the ethics counsellor is refusing to investigate as well. We have the Prime Minister's personally appointed ethics counsellor refusing to investigate. We have Liberal members stacking the committees refusing to allow the committees to investigate. The minister is refusing to request an RCMP investigation. All the while we know that the Prime Minister and the former minister of public works breached the code of ethics and improperly interfered in the operation of crown corporations
The second part of my hon. friend's question dealt with timelines and process to clean this mess up. I do not know about timelines but I think as soon as possible, today if we could. We should strike a special committee to investigate all of the circumstances of corruption, patronage, political payoffs, scandal, wrongdoing and breaches of the code of ethics. We should get to the bottom of it and let that committee make recommendations on how to proceed from there.