Mr. Speaker, I agree a lot with what the member has just posed as a question. However we must remember that this code will only come into effect at the beginning of the 38th Parliament. The little fact that is hidden in here is that we will be under the Liberal regime until the next election.
Under the present regime, the ethics counsellor provides personal and confidential advice to cabinet ministers and to the Prime Minister. Any public pronouncements that he has made and that have been posted on his website, unfortunately, have, in some instances, been very carefully sanitized so that they, in essence, become part of the damage control team to which I spoke.
I believe that in this code and with the regime of the new ethics commissioner and the rules under which he will operate, there will be more openness. However I think there is still a real danger of sanitization of things. For example, when the Prime Minister was originally suspected of arranging for a loan in his own riding, of which he became an indirect beneficiary, we got no real facts out of that at all.
I will wait eagerly to see whether this new regime will be better but, frankly, I have serious doubts about it.