Mr. Speaker, let me say in responding to the speech given by my colleague from British Columbia that I always appreciate his speeches. He is a great speech maker. We have heard many of his talks in the House and he has a lot of insight into many different issues.
On the issue of the ethics commissioner, the appointment process and the jobs and duties of both the ethics commissioner and the ethics officer for the Senate, it seems to me that the government is, to use an old phrase, barking up the wrong tree.
My colleague alluded to that in his speech, but I would like to enlarge on it. To my knowledge there has not been a single case in the last 10 years of a member of Parliament actually being called on the carpet because of misspending. That is because the only money the member of Parliament has control over, of course, is basically the office budget and travel expenses. I think we have good checks and balances with a good financial officer in the House of Commons who keeps us honest in this regard. Everything is done well.
There has been no reason for Canadians to judge Parliament or government based on backbench and opposition members of Parliament and yet the government seems to be consumed with setting up, at considerable expense, the office of the ethics commissioner. Then it goes a step further and says, “But the ethics commissioner will not be dealing directly on issues with respect to cabinet problems in the same way”. There is a whole different set of rules and basically it is exactly the same as what we have now, with the ethics counsellor investigating on request and basically reporting to the Prime Minister.
I would like to ask my colleague what he thinks about that kind of scheme and why he thinks the government is so interested in solving a problem that actually does not exist.