Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise an issue regarding the unethical behaviour of the government.
On April 9, the Prime Minister asked his former minister for the status of women to resign. The Prime Minister stated that it was related to matters of a criminal nature.
Then we heard about the former Conservative MP for Edmonton--Strathcona, who had been charged with driving under the influence and with possession of cocaine. He was using the Conservative logo on his website as well as the MP cards for his Green Power Generation, despite the fact that he was no longer a member of Parliament.
The former Conservative caucus chair also misused a special government passport to promote a green energy company in Cuba, leaving the impression that his overtures had government approval.
To add insult to this unethical or ethical injury, the Minister of Industry appeared in a promotional video for a chemical company owned by a prominent Conservative in his own riding. Where are the ethics? Where is transparency? Where is accountability?
We then have the Conservative member of Parliament for Calgary Northeast, who is linked to a mortgage fraud investigation and is currently being sued for ignoring repeated requests to turn over records related to five real estate transactions.
We have constant examples of unethical behaviour. The ministers of Labour and Natural Resources have declined to appear before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates to discuss lobbying access to the green infrastructure fund, followed by a timely announcement from thePrime Minister that he would not allow staffers to attend and be questioned, especially when those staffers were interfering with the inquiry.
There is unaccountability, non-transparency, and the Prime Minister is the person who should be accountable and he should ensure that this accountability takes place.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet's effort to ban political staff from appearing before committees, after blaming them for recent cover-ups, is an attempt to avoid accountability to Parliament.
Then we have committees treated as circuses by the Minister of Transport, who shows up at committee meetings to stand in for the Prime Minister's spokesman.
One of the major problems we face when looking at ethics is that we are either ethical or not ethical, and the government just does not get it. It has so many examples of trying to circumvent ethics, it just does not know where to stop, and when questions are posed and ministers are asked to be accountable, the Prime Minister has shown no leadership. In fact, he obfuscates every time.
The Conservatives control how information is released. They control who releases information. They control the information that is being released, and that is not transparent, especially when the government brought forward the Federal Accountability Act. Governments have to walk the talk. The public deserves better.
Can the government please tell me how it will deal with the growing problem of the ethically-challenged decisions on behalf of the Conservative Party.