Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by our NDP colleague and appreciate her comments. I also remember Mr. Earle, who was here as a member of Parliament in a previous Parliament, and I as well respected and appreciated his work on this particular portfolio.
One of the things the member spoke about on several occasions was the necessity of having two-thirds majority support in the House for the appointment of the ethics commissioner. I would concur with that. In fact, that was originally the intent of our amendment, which we put when we decided we would like this thing sent back to the committee and improved.
However, in discussions at committee, it was stated that this would require a constitutional amendment. We got into a little bit of a hassle about it because that is not entirely clear. It is true that the Parliament of Canada Act states that votes in the House shall be carried by a majority vote. That is why, for example, last week we had for the first time in 40 years the Speaker breaking a tie in order to get a clear vote on one side or the other of an issue.
It is true that the act says this; however, there would be nothing in my view and in the view of our researchers to stop us having a provision that notwithstanding this is what the Constitution says with respect to a vote on this one issue, it is the choice of Parliament to have a two-thirds majority vote so that the individual chosen has a clear and high degree of support among members of the House. That would be one way of achieving this.
However, when we proposed to put that in as an amendment it was ruled to be unacceptable because of that constitutional question. I think the question is still unanswered, but that is really what happened. I thought I just would fill the member in on that part of it.
So our other proposal, in order to hopefully achieve the same result, is to require the Prime Minister to consult and to actually reach a consensus among the leaders of the parties before he puts the name forward for a vote in the House, because if there is consensus from our leaders then hopefully all parties would have support for the individual chosen, and we all know that it is very important for the commissioner to have the support of all members of the House. I would appreciate a comment back on that; I think my remarks were probably more a comment than a question.