Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Kitchener Centre for a very well delivered speech. She is probably a good spokesman for the government because she sounds credible.
Herein is the dilemma. When the throne speech speaks about ethics, the throne speech itself is unethical because it represents that there will be an independent ethics commissioner and it uses a word for someone who is not independent at all. That person will still be appointed by the Prime Minister. There is no meaningful input by the rest of Parliament.
Furthermore, the legislation that the government is purporting to reinstate says, explicitly, that when the ethics commissioner deals with matters pertaining to the cabinet, where all the problems have been in the last 10 years, then the ethics commissioner does not deal with them in the same way. It still requires confidential reports be given to the Prime Minister. It still requires that the ethics commissioner consult with the Prime Minister prior to tabling a report.
It can be nicely laundered and it can look really good but it is a shame that on the matter of ethics the government cannot come clean.
I ask the member why in that single phrase it erroneously says that there will be an independent ethics commissioner when in fact that is not the case?