Mr. Speaker, I was at the three hour committee meeting. The member for Portage--Lisgar made reference to past accusations against Mr. Gagliano. I think that with due care there have been no accusations against the former minister.
In fact, this issue has to do with allegations and innuendo. Other than the Groupaction issue which has come up now, all of the other allegations or innuendo are all matters which have been before the House previously, all matters which have been disposed of by the ethics councillor or otherwise disposed of.
The last speaker, the member for Winnipeg--Transcona, also questioned whether the prior job was relevant to the ability to do the job. He is quite right, Mr. Speaker, and I think you would agree that the experience and expertise of an individual is relevant. What is not relevant though is whether or not we can dig into allegations and innuendo. There have been no charges laid; there have been no legal proceedings. There have been no questions that have been unanswered.
Mr. Speaker, from this standpoint the issue is a matter of using allegations as the basis for questions and fishing rather than using proven facts and evidence that is prima facie.
Finally I point out that the Minister of Public Works and Government Services did not, as a headline suggests, blame some issue on some previous member. All he simply did was to refer to the fact that there have been three directors general and two ministers since this event occurred. That was a spin of the media and certainly not the representation of the minister.
The chairman of the committee was very forthright with the committee. He read out the terms of reference and also outlined in great detail exactly what we could do in terms of the examination under question. There was also a reaffirmation by the clerk of the committee and there was a ruling. As soon as the issue came up in the first instance by the member for Portage--Lisgar, it was challenged on the basis that the chair had laid it out. There was a challenge to the chair and the chair's decision was sustained.
The committee fully exhausted the grounds on which it could explore this thing. It did not exclude references to any aspects of the job and prior jobs of Mr. Gagliano, but it certainly dealt directly with allegations and innuendo as being inappropriate in regard to that examination.