Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga West is attempting to do what the Prime Minister did this morning. It is to lecture members of parliament and all the opposition parties on the role they are playing in undermining public confidence in government by focusing on scandal.
Yet the speaking notes for the Liberal Party are nothing but an attack on every opposition member in the House and nothing but a collection of sleaze and scurrilous attempts to keep this debate at a level that is reprehensible. The Liberals continue to obfuscate and disguise the difficult issues that are before them by blaming the opposition.
If we look at the notes provided for the Liberal Party, they are nothing but a chronicle of misdemeanors by the Conservative and Alliance parties. The Liberal members tried hard to go after the NDP. They could not find anything with our federal colleagues so they went after provincial governments. They could not find anything so they were forced to recognize that the federal NDP is actually a leader in the field of government ethics. They had to refer to our election campaign which made commitments to amend the Elections Act to incorporate the funding of party leadership campaigns, and to remove the Prime Minister's arbitrary power to make unilateral appointments without any checks or balances.
The only thing they forgot to mention, and this is regrettable, is that the leader of the NDP caucus and other members have introduced private members' bills on a code of ethics for parliamentarians.
Will the member for Mississauga West commit to the House today that we will put an end to this kind of name calling, starting with cleaning up the mess in his caucus so that we can get back to the main issues, so we can get back to debates on health care, agriculture and the environment that many of us have been attempting to do for weeks to no avail. The government is either so buried under in terms of scandals or deflects every serious issue that comes along.