Mr. Speaker, perhaps the way I should phrase this is by not referring specifically to the exchange that took place here but more to the media strategy that goes on outside the House and which consists of saying that if there were any ethical dilemmas government members were caught up in, Brian Mulroney was caught up in them too. It does not seem to matter whether there are any facts to actually link Brian Mulroney to this kind of thing, the assertion is made anyway and therefore somehow it rubs off on members of that party.
I must say that personally I think the link to Mr. Mulroney is very unfair, but leaving that aside, the point is that we do it, they did it and, back there in the distant past, every other government did it. In the future every other government will do it so we are better off with the people we know and not the ones we do not know because we will never get above this standard. That is the kind of messaging we will see constantly from the government. That is also the messaging, incidentally, that explains the endless pursuit that has gone on by the government of Mr. Mulroney in the attempt to make up or discover dilemmas that do not exist. That was what produced the airbus scandal, among other things.
With regard to the specific question asked by my hon. colleague about the sorts of things we could do between elections, a few things come to my mind. I think it would be useful to give members of the public the opportunity to directly challenge members who have not been representing the public interest. This of course is the policy of recall that my party has advocated for a long time. We should give members of the public the ability to petition to have a byelection called in their constituency if their member is failing to do his or her duty to represent his or her constituents. That would certainly have an impact on the ethical conduct of members, not just members who are involved in misspending of public funds or misappropriations, but members who fail to represent their constituents at some other level or who behave in a manner that is simply unbecoming of a member of parliament. I think that would be a very useful measure. I would throw that out as one possible measure.