Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister mentioned about five times in his speech about having raised the bar and that this was the justification for this new contrition of having discovered the ethics that Canadians expect.
Given the current standard, which I would suggest is pretty low, the conflict of interest in the post-employment code for public office holders is pretty broad. It was brought in by the government in 1994.
Avoidance of preferential treatment. In section 23(1) it states:
A public office holder shall take care to avoid being placed or the appearance of being placed under an obligation to any person or organization, or the representative of a person or organization, that might profit from special consideration on the part of the office holder.
That is a pretty low bar and yet ministers of the government, most recently the public works minister, have clearly limboed under that bar.
Would the opposition leader agree that the standard has been repeatedly broken by the government?