Mr. Speaker, I certainly like my name in the same sentence as ethics. Perhaps we could instill some of that in the government and we will all be successful.
The beautiful thing about the adjournment proceedings or the late show is that we can actually try to get some answers from a government that is not terribly forthcoming with those answers. We tried to elicit some answers from the government, answers to what I consider to be logical, well thought out, serious questions that are not too often dealt with by logical, well thought out, serious answers.
On February 20, I had the opportunity of posing a question to the Deputy Prime Minister. It had to do with what I thought was a very serious question of ethics. It had to do with the member for LaSalle—Émard, who in fact had left cabinet. But prior to leaving cabinet, the member for LaSalle--Émard was dealing with some very specific issues at that cabinet table yet was still having some serious investment involvement in a private sector corporation.
As a matter of fact, I asked if the member for LaSalle—Émard did not perhaps have a conflict of interest when dealing with such things as tax law or tax implications, perhaps, while sitting at the cabinet table but in fact perhaps putting some legislation in place that would be for the betterment of the private sector corporations that he had some interest in. The Deputy Prime Minister said no, that was not in fact true, because the Parker commission dealt with the definition of conflict, and in his opinion there was no conflict.
What do we know? We know that the member for LaSalle—Émard in fact met 12 times with the administrators of what is referred to as a blind trust. How can one meet 12 times with the administrator of a blind trust and still logically consider that to be a blind trust? There is a contradiction there that I do not think anybody in the House could see as anything other than a contradiction.
The second thing we heard was that not only did the member for LaSalle—Émard meet with the administrators, the Prime Minister said he had no idea of what was going on in those meetings because he was not part of them.
The third part of this was that the ethics counsellor said that he cannot reveal what happened because it is private. There is a Catch-22 here. The public unfortunately is caught in this Catch-22 and does not have the opportunity to find out in fact whether there is a conflict or not.
The member for LaSalle—Émard without question was at that cabinet table. Did he discuss? No. Did he influence, perhaps? No. In fact, did he direct the change to law that may well have benefited his private sector corporations? Is that in fact the conflict? The Deputy Prime Minister says no, because it falls under the Parker commission. If I may, let me very quickly quote what the Parker commission defines as a conflict of interest: “a situation in which a minister of the Crown has knowledge of a private economic interest that is sufficient to influence the exercise of his or her public duties and responsibilities”. That is pretty defined. Then it goes on to say, “A conflict, therefore, does not require acting on that knowledge. Simple possession creates conflict”.
Without question, the member for LaSalle—Émard was in a conflict when he sat at that cabinet table and the Deputy Prime Minister, unfortunately, in quoting the Parker commission, made my statement absolutely correct. There was a conflict and this government in the name of ethics has to identify that conflict.