Mr. Speaker, there have always been watchdogs on Parliament. Members know that, whether it is the RCMP or other bodies. When those bodies have been asked to look into certain situations, they have and when they come back with rulings that the opposition is not happy with, the cacophony continues.
We did talk about an ethics counsellor in 1993. That did happen. Today the bar has been raised. Why? It is because of certain allegations. As I said before, in our country, the presumption of innocence is there, but what we have failed to do here is to be a little bit more transparent in this entire initiative.
The way that we are portraying it to Canadians is that during these 10 years there has been so much mismanagement, so much undermining, and so many little deals going on that now we need an independent person.
We are all accountable. My colleagues all know we are accountable, whether it is the franking system we use, the comments we make outside or whether it is how we use our budgets. We are accountable. There is a system in place. Let us not be portrayed to Canadians as unaccountable because we are.
The people to whom we are accountable inevitably are the taxpayers and voters. At the end of the day, let them judge the parties by marking their X and saying that, yes, they approve of them, yes, they are accountable or yes they are ethical. Only they can judge us.