Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact the minister was restrained today. When I brought this issue up last time, he said that my comments were verging on the despicable. I thank him for his self-restraint.
The problem is not that the minister divested himself of Grand Canadian Academy. We all agree that that occurred within a reasonable timeline and there is no dispute there.
The question is whether the value of Grand Canadian Academy at the time of its divestiture had been increased by the foreknowledge that the minister would be accompanying the future owners of that company to China and assisting them in signing a contract. If that were the case and it raised the price, then he was enriching himself at taxpayer expense. Canadians paid for that trip and that is a very serious conflict.
Alternatively, he may simply have caused the price to go up for the benefit of those partners, in which case they were being enriched.
As I cited under section 8 of the Conflict of Interest Code, both of those are conflicts of interest and are inappropriate in his position.