Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago I put a question to the minister of ACOA. It was based on a speech given by the president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. What I suggested to the minister was that the president of ACOA had stepped outside her bounds as president of an agency when she publicly endorsed a policy paper by the Liberal Party of Canada. It was not government policy, it was simply a policy paper put together by a group of Liberals. In fact it was the Liberal Atlantic caucus, but it has never been government policy.
Therefore, I suggest that she breached the public services ethics act when she did that. She clearly stepped outside of her bounds. She is not there to be a political voice for the Liberal Party of Canada. She is there to serve the agency and to serve all citizens in a non-partisan way. She should not be picking favourites, and that is exactly what she did when she gave that speech in Moncton on February 23 this year.
She has clearly stepped outside of her responsibilities as the president of an agency of government. I would like to quote from the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service of Canada. It states:
Public servants must work within the laws of Canada and maintain the tradition of the political neutrality of the Public Service.
It goes on to say:
Deputy Heads and senior managers have a particular responsibility to exemplify, in their actions and behaviours, the values of public service...It is expected that they will take special care to ensure that they comply at all times with both the spirit and the specific requirements of this Code.
She did not do that. In fact this document that she promoted, which is called the “Rising Tide” was not even mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. It was only a reference when the Prime Minister, the next day, under pressure from his Liberal members of Parliament suggested that he should make reference to it in his speech when debating the Speech from the Throne.
It is pretty obvious that it is not government policy. In fact the minister himself suggested that this would be the basis of the Liberal Party's election platform in the next election.
I think it is fundamentally wrong when a public servant is given instructions from a minister of the Crown to go out on the rubber chicken circuit speaking tour promoting a Liberal Party policy document. When the president gave her speech, she even suggested that it was just a discussion paper and referenced that paper in relation to positions held by other political parties. Not only was she promoting the Liberal Party, she was criticizing positions by other political parties, which is way outside her limits.
She should be reined in by the minister. In fact when I questioned the minister in the House a week or so ago, Mr. Speaker, you were in the chair, and the minister stood on his feet and said in reply to my question:
Mr. Speaker, the deputy minister of ACOA was merely doing her job as deputy minister. She is speaking out on government policy. The implementation--