Mr. Speaker, the Pacific gateway file has been surrounded by the whole issue of the member for Vancouver Kingsway who crossed the floor. He was the individual who left the Liberal Party and went to the Conservative Party. He purports at different times to be a champion of the gateway project itself.
It is important in terms of transparency and ethics to have the practice of floor crossing stopped. The member for Vancouver Kingsway should actually have to sit as an independent. He could vote with the government all he wants. He could be part of an independent system and decide what he wanted to do on individual issues. He could work with the government in some type of affiliation. However, to go from being a Liberal to being a Conservative in a matter of weeks is hypocrisy. It is fraud on the election system. It is reprehensible because people have been basically subverted in terms of their democratic right to choose.
It is important to ask the member for North Vancouver if he will support stopping the floor crossing that has happened in the House of Commons. The Manitoba government has done it. The reasonable expectation is that a member would either go back to the electorate and be brought back as a member of a different party or the member would sit as an independent and would vote with the government if the member chose to do so . At least the conflict of interest that there is on this file would be absent.