Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. He kind of railed against the term “big union bosses”. However, would he respond to the words of his former colleague, Ryan Cleary, the former NDP MP for St. John's South—Mount Pearl? In his recent blog post, which appeared in the Newfoundland Herald this week, he said, “As a NDP MP, for example, there was an unspoken rule that I could not take a public stand on a fishery issue without first running it by the [Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union]...”.
When he talks about transparency and accountability, does the member think that is what he is referring to? Is that the NDP mantra, that any public stand members take in their constituency or for the portfolios to which they are assigned must first be run through the union, which, in the case of Ryan Cleary, was the FFAW? Does he have a similar arrangement that he would like to share with the House? Is Mr. Cleary not telling the truth, or what is the big union boss relationship with the NDP?