Mr. Speaker, I am sure you can appreciate my bewilderment in the sense that if the Speaker himself is confused about the issue of process, he can understand why I am a bit confused. As well, I think the viewing public at home would be confused about how this all transpired.
In any event, the good news is that I believe the House does unanimously support the three motions that have come to the floor of the Chamber in such a strange manner this afternoon. Perhaps it is a bit indicative of the fact that we are still sitting at almost the end of June and I am sure that members from all parties are getting quite tired. However let us carry on.
As I was saying, I have some concerns as well with the sport dispute resolution centre. It is supported quite widely by the amateur athletes of the country and certainly we support it as well. As my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley said, it is a step forward. I am sure members can appreciate that we certainly would hope not to see Liberal patronage run amok as we have seen with other boards. We will watch quite closely to see who exactly is appointed to this board because it is important.
At committee my colleague from Fraser Valley listened to testimony from athletes and organizations representing athletes. They said it was important to have a board in place as an appeal mechanism so that when they had a dispute, the board hopefully would intercede and bring it to a satisfactory resolution for both sides.
As we have seen so often before, I would hate to see a board, which has been given an important role to play in our nation, seized with patronage. I would not want to see some disgraced Liberal minister or member of parliament being appointed to the board rather than someone with the experience, knowledge and expertise to do the job in the best interests of the people, the people who that person is expected to serve.
I am also concerned about the cost of this. It is my understanding, in talking to colleagues who have served on the committee that has dealt this, that nowhere can we find that the cost has been dealt with adequately. Of concern as well is that there be an adequate budget for this dispute resolution centre of Canada, but not one that would not be supported by the amateur sport industry itself. There are concerns all the time that the industry does not have enough money to its job. Obviously we would want to watch very closely the money that is allocated to the sport dispute resolution centre and we would want to see the proposed budget.
The final point I want to make on Motion No. 10, which deals with the board, is the establishment of a code of ethics for its directors and its employees. There is a touch of irony here in the sense that we could see a situation develop where this brand new board would have a code of ethics for its directors and employees long before the government brings forward its much anticipated and long promised code of ethics for members of parliament. The government might want to consider bringing that forward.
Obviously all of us believe that people who are appointed to these types of institutions should be held accountable, but we ourselves should be held accountable as well. We do not want to have a situation where people can point to us and say that it is the age old thing of “Do as I say, not as I do”.