Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the remarks of the hon. member, who happens to be our critic on ethics. He has shown a high standard of ethics himself, sitting in the House and participating in the debates so vigorously all the time. I want to compliment him for the hard work he does in delivering so many speeches, particularly so passionately all the time and the amount of knowledge on various issues.
All of us, and I am sure even the members on the backbenches of the Liberal government, are disappointed by this decade of ministerial mishaps. I have spoken personally to many members on the government side. They are disappointed with the scandals and corruption that have haunted the Liberals again and again.
When the Prime Minister appoints a lap dog where the motivation is that the interests of his government will be served, that is absolutely wrong. It sets the bar very low, by any standard, for the ethical standards of the government. I think that is wrong. The member has rightly pointed out that the ethics commissioner should be completely independent and should report to Parliament rather than the prime minister. I think this exercise is wrong.
As has been stated already in the debate, the official opposition is not against the appointment of the ethics commissioner, but we are against the Liberal version of ethics. We are opposed to that. The ethics commissioner should be truly independent if we want the commissioner's role to be a meaningful one.
If the Liberals want to fool the Canadian public and just appoint one, then I think this serves the purpose for the government members to do whatever they want to do and to fool the public that there is an ethics commissioner or counsellor or whatever. It is very disappointing. I am highly disappointed that 10 years ago the members on the government side, as members of the opposition, jumped up and down and demanded that the ethics commissioner should be independent and report to Parliament, but when they came to power and had the full opportunity, not only did they not appoint an independent ethics commissioner but they voted shamelessly against a motion of the official opposition to appoint an independent commissioner. That is really shameful. It is a disgrace in this House.