Madam Speaker, that is actually fairly interesting. In committee, we had a good debate on this particular question of how long the appointment should be for and whether the person should be eligible for reappointment.
I think I actually had some influence on this decision. I will claim, as I have always done, that I personally do not believe in limitations on how long a person can serve in office or how many terms they are eligible for re-election; hence I feel the same about this particular position.
I believe there should be a review. In the case of members of Parliament, of course, there is an election from time to time and that is when we are accountable to our electors. I believe that the position of ethics commissioner should be reviewed, just as he is selected in the first instance, I would hope, by an all party committee and with approval of the House and a very strong majority, showing the approval of the person's work. Then, after a minimum amount of time, the person would go through that again. If that individual is doing a good job, we should not be disqualified from reappointing him or her simply because they have been doing a good job too long. I do not care whether it has been for two or three terms. If he or she is doing a good job and people trust that individual, then let us reappoint the person.
That is why the legislation states that the ethics commissioner will be appointed for five years. The committee came to the conclusion that a five year term is adequate to get everything in place and have a smoothly running organization to handle the portfolio, yet to have a re-accountability every five years without limitation says that if the person is doing a good job we can ask the individual to continue. If not, the all party committee would then be in a position to search for someone else.
With respect to the Senate, it has basically given us notice that it will not have any commoners telling it what to do. That is basically the executive summary of the message from the Senate. The Senate has said it does not want to have any part or parcel of either the ethics commissioner from the House of Commons or our own code of ethics. The senators say they will have their own. When the codes of ethics finally are written into the Standing Orders of both Houses, it really will be quite interesting to see what the differences are and which standards are perhaps a little more strenuous and more rigorous.
The Senate has chosen to have a Senate officer of ethics for a seven year term. I guess probably it is because the average age over there is a little longer, so seven years to them seems like five to us. That was a little bit of a joke there, Madam Speaker.