Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to fulfill the wish of the hon. member who spoke previously that I rise and speak to the issue.
I have had a compelling interest in the matter of ethics and trying to restore the belief of Canadians in the integrity of their government. I have had that interest since before I ran for parliament. When I was elected I came here and had an opportunity to serve on, among other things, a joint House of Commons Senate committee on a code of ethics for parliamentarians. We went through a very interesting process.
I must ask the question: What is it that builds trust? I have encountered a number of people in my lifetime whom I trusted implicitly. There have been a number of others whom I did not trust. What is the difference? The difference lies in judging the record.
If I were to think of the individuals I trust, and there are a number of them whom I will not bother to name, I would probably start with my own dear father. He is now 90 years old and I have trusted him implicitly all my life. I have never once observed him treating someone unkindly. Nor have I ever observed him trying to take advantage of or cheat someone. It has been just the opposite. He has always bent over backwards to give people a good deal. I learned from him that to be trustworthy one must simply be trusted. That is what we need in government.
With all due respect to the hon. member for Verchères--Les-Patriotes, having a code is important because it restrains and controls those who are not trustworthy. That is the only reason we need it. For people who are already trustworthy we do not need a code because they will do what is right. It is only for those who are untrustworthy.
When Canadians look at parliament why should they trust it? Why should they trust its members? Unfortunately we wear the coat that is placed on all of us. I heard a very bad joke some time ago. A friend of mine said “Do you know what is wrong with politicians?” People are always poking fun at politicians, but like a total idiot I said “No, what?” I should have passed. He said “The thing that is wrong with politicians is that 95% of them give the other 5% a bad name.”
That is just inaccurate. It is not my observation. When I look around at the members I work with, not only in my party but in all the other parties, I believe in the integrity and trustworthiness of by far the majority of the people here. Unfortunately members of the public keep in their minds breaches of trust and attribute them to all of us and the institution itself.
A number of breaches of trust come to light. For example, I consider it a breach of trust when the auditor general gives a report of the kind that was given here yesterday. It is a breach of trust to Canadian taxpayers who work hard, skimp and save to make ends meet and pay all the bills to find the government has totally mismanaged and wasted their money.
We need to address the issue of financial management in government in a big and real way. It is a huge task. There is no doubt about it. We have heard the minister of HRDC proclaim that the problems in her department are being looked at and say she is trying to improve them. I want to trust in that. I really do.
I do not see the results of it. The auditor general, whose job it is to report, has come up with all these examples of mismanagement, improper accounting, unauthorized payments and foolish things being purchased. We have heard that in some cases the government paid twice for a phantom report. That builds distrust. We need to stop that at all costs.
It also depends on openness. I am appalled when the auditor general, who I do not think has any vested interest in giving a statement or an evaluation to the House and to Canadian people of the mismanagement of the financial affairs, reports that money was misspent or mismanaged. The Minister of Finance answered a question in this regard. Instead of answering yes, that the auditor general had pointed out the problem and that they were going to do what they could to fix it, he flustered and blustered and said that the opposition party was always looking at negative things. No, we just want to get it fixed.
The main thing I would like to say is that we need an independent ethics counsellor. The parliamentary secretary who just spoke talked about the fact that the government brought in an independent ethics counsellor. It has not. I have met Mr. Wilson. He is a fine man and I really want to trust him. However the government and the Prime Minister have shackled him by not giving him the freedom to report independently like the auditor general does.
He also made a statement which I do not think is accurate. He said that the ethics counsellor tabled reports regularly in the House. I have never seen one. I have been here for eight years and the government has been in power for eight years. In its platform it said there would be an independent ethics counsellor. We have looked for those things. We had a supply day motion that was along the line of the motion today and the government voted it down. It said it would not have an ethics counsellor who would report directly to parliament.
I ask why not? In the event that the Prime Minister and his dealings in Shawinigan are on the up and up and fair and square, I would welcome an independent ethics counsellor who is totally free of any implied control by the Prime Minister. Instead the hands of the ethics counsellor are tied. He can only report to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister puts his spin on it, and we still do not know whether things in that area are right or wrong. When we call for an independent investigation, the Prime Minister has the ultimate call on it. He is the one who calls on his members to vote. They vote against an independent investigation, so it is never done.
If I am innocent, I want an investigation because I will be declared innocent and set free. If I am guilty, then I do not want it because then I will be exposed. When the government in its lack of wisdom, decides that there will not be an independent ethics counsellor, it is actually doing just the opposite of what it wants to achieve, and that is to build the trust of Canadians in our institution and in us as individuals.
I cannot state strongly enough that we need to have an independent ethics counsellor. I urge all members to be the kind of honourable people that our title gives. When we call each other hon. members, let us actually be honourable. Let us have a code that looks after those who unfortunately do not have the built-in level of morality.