Mr. Speaker, I am not the government House leader yet. Let us let Canadians vote on that first.
As to the question from my friend, I do not think he actually understands the definition of the word “irony”, in the sense that his leader made grandiose statements about a new ethical standard and all the rest, and swore on a stack of Bibles that he did not take any public money while going to these paid speaking engagements as a member of Parliament.
Again, I do not accuse the Liberal leader of knowingly telling a lie, but in fact that is what ended up happening, because the system in place that my friend thinks is so wonderful and accountable to Canadians, failed. It failed the Liberal leader, actually. That is a shame, because he stood in front of Canadians and said he never took any public money, ever, for these paid public speaking engagements.
One could debate the idea the members of Parliament get paid to speak to the public. I think that is a healthy debate we should have in this place. New Democrats think we are already paid to speak to the public, but that is a different discussion.
More importantly, my point is that our efforts to put through this motion were to have accountability, transparency, and the end of self-policing, which the Liberals are so fond of and which got them in trouble when they ran the sponsorship program. They thought self-policing was enough.
We need good policing. The Auditor General agrees with what the NDP has proposed. I have no idea why the Liberals would rather agree with the Conservative Party than the Auditor General of Canada.