Debates of Oct. 23rd, 2017

Opposition Motion—Minister of Finance and Conflict of Interest Act

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate.

I was not in the House last week or the two weeks before that because I was participating, along with parliamentary colleagues of all political stripes, in the prebudget consultations of the Standing Committee on Finance. We had the pleasure of criss-crossing this great country to meet with people and talk about their hopes, wishes, and aspirations for the 2018 budget.

During these consultations, I read in the newspapers that there had been quite a kerfuffle here in Ottawa, but it was good to be on the ground talking with people about their concerns. These concerns, I might add, did not always match up with what we hear in the House, which is unfortunate. I want to thank my colleague, the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge, for his comments. I appreciated his summary. As for me, I would like to briefly recap the issue before us.

Since his appointment, the Minister of Finance has been working closely with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to ensure that all the rules are followed, both for him and for all parliamentarians.

The finance minister announced that he would not just follow the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's recommendations but that he would go the extra mile in order to maintain the public's confidence as we continue our work to grow Canada's middle class.

The finance minister also announced that he would take additional steps. First, he is going to set up a blind trust for his assets and those of his family. Then, he will continue to work with the Ethics Commissioner and an administrator to turn over his family's assets related to Morneau Shepell in an orderly and appropriate manner. As an additional precaution, and this is a message to all parliamentarians, he will continue to use a conflict of interest screen to prevent conflicts of interest, unless the Ethics Commissioner tells him otherwise. There. I addressed the issue before us.

I do wonder, however, why we are even talking about such ridiculous issues. We all know that the Minister of Finance is an honourable man who followed both the letter and the spirit of the Ethics Commissioner's recommendations. The fact that we are debating issues such as this one just shows that things are going well. The economy is growing. Things are going so well that the opposition parties were taken by surprise and they essentially had to make up some ethical issues. That is the real reason.

There has been a lot of good news regarding the economy, and I know it is hurting the opposition. Since December 2015, Canada's unemployment rate has been the lowest it has been in nearly a decade. That is impressive and incredible. However, that is not all. Over 400,000 jobs, most of them full-time, have been created since we took office. That is outstanding.

That is a great record for any government. We are proud to have made those accomplishments since this Liberal government took office in 2015. That is progress.

That is not all we have done. We have also helped the Canadian economy, something I could talk about at length. As my colleague from Winnipeg North and Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons often says, good news bears repeating. The Canadian economy is growing faster than it has in over 10 years. That is incredible, and it is in fact because of the measures introduced by the Minister of Finance and adopted by Parliament. We adopted those measures, but there is a certain political party that never supported them. Unfortunately, that is its official position. That party was there when we decided to lower taxes for the middle class and raise them for the wealthiest 1%. Unfortunately, that party voted against those measures. I do not take any pleasure in saying this. That party voted against the Canada child benefit that we created and that lifted over 300,000 young people out of poverty. Lifting children out of poverty is a great thing. This is good news.

Our plan to grow the economy in a way that benefits the middle class and those working hard to join it has been successful. That is why we are where we are today.

It is too bad that the opposition decided to debate this motion because we could have talked about other issues that are extremely important, not just for the Canadian economy but—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. The hon. member for Brandon—Souris on a point of order.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, it is a pity we have not heard anything in my hon. colleague's speech across the way regarding the issue before us today, the motion about the ethics of the finance minister. The Liberals do not have a plan because their plan is coming out. Maybe there will be a plan tomorrow that will try to convince Canadians that what the Liberals have done over the last two years has been to their detriment as Canadians, and to the detriment of the members across the way as government. If we could just bring the member back to the topic that is at hand, we may get some more clarification in regard to what was asked today.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Brandon—Souris for bringing this point to the House. Members will know of course that relevance is one of the requirements of speeches and comments before the House. That said, I have listened to the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer and noted that at the beginning of his remarks he put into context his comments in relation to the challenge of the finance minister's work, and then he went on to present some ideas on that other side of the argument. That actually means, from the way I see it, that the speech is within the bounds of relevance.

I will just remind hon. members that members are afforded a great deal of boundary, or liberty if you will, to pose these kinds of arguments as long as they make a connection, as the member for Hull—Aylmer did in the opening comments of his remarks. However, I would remind him to keep it in that spirit and keep it in context.

We will go back to the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

From your lips to God's ears, Mr. Speaker. I agree with you. As you said, I started my speech by saying that the Minister of Finance was an honourable man who has taken steps to remedy the situation, as he has always done since becoming the finance minister. I spoke about the economy because I believe that it is the reason why the opposition moved this motion. The Canadian economy is doing so well that the opposition wants to draw Canadians' attention away from that by talking about trivial things.

It is unfortunate that I have only a few minutes remaining because I have a lot more to say on this issue and the reasons why we are having this debate today.

I would like to thank my colleague opposite because he gave me one last chance to talk about something important. We have an extraordinary economic record thanks to the hard work of Canadians across the country who had the courage to be optimistic following the 2015 election and reinvest in the economy.

Tomorrow, a great announcement will be made. The Minister of Finance will tell us about the progress he has made by presenting the fall economic statement to the House of Commons. I do not have the inside track, but I trust the finance minister when he tells me that there will be good news. That good news will simply add to his long list of accomplishments both in the private sector and as finance minister. I am sure that we will have good news tomorrow, and that all Canadians will appreciate the results of his efforts.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution to this debate. While I do respect him, I am disappointed that he does not see how important this ethical issue is. He wants to talk numbers, and he is so excited about them that he is blind to the importance of ethical issues to our society, our democracy, and the House of Commons.

He repeatedly said that we could have talked about this or that other thing today. He seems to think the question before us and ethical issues in general are trivial matters. In his opinion, a minister who pockets thousands of dollars a month through a company governed by laws the minister himself introduces, is of no importance to Canadians and is merely a distraction.

I would like my colleague to at least acknowledge that ethical issues are important to our society, particularly when it comes to ministers and public office holders, who make decisions every day and must be held to the highest ethical standards. Can he at least talk about how important he thinks that is?

I would also like to know what he thinks of the fact that the minister misled his own caucus, the House of Commons, and Canadians about the blind trust.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Sherbrooke, a man I respect very much. We share a birthday, but we were not born in the same year.

I take this all very seriously because it is critical. It is why the minister consulted the Ethics Commissioner when he took office. It is also why the Ethics Commissioner has never said that the Minister of Finance was in violation of the law. On the contrary, he consulted the commissioner, followed her recommendations, and they agreed on what he needed to do in order to be able to continue his work.

I take this matter very seriously and the Minister of Finance has shown that he took it very seriously as well. As I said at the beginning of my speech, in the wake of the outcry no one can say that the minister did not follow the recommendations of the Ethics Commissioner. He even decided to go above and beyond what she expected of him. This shows that he is a man of integrity and a credit to all hon. members.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I too have a lot of respect for my colleague and thank him for his intervention, even though it was way off topic.

My colleague accused Conservatives of focusing on tiny things. Let me remind my colleague, and indeed all Canadians, that the finance minister is responsible for our pension laws, he controls $300 billion of taxes and spending for our country, his department is in charge of billions of dollars in government bonds, he holds all of the government's shares in the Bank of Canada, and he is responsible for CMHC's hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage insurance. No one has more power to enrich a company and its shareholders with public resources than the finance minister.

My question is very simple. The guidelines in the code and the act are very clear. They are written down for every member of Parliament and every minister. Why, after two full years of being in government, has the finance minister failed to comply with the clearly written rules of the code and the act?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague from Kitchener—Conestoga, whom I know quite well. I really respect him and the work he does in the House and especially what he does outside the House on spiritual matters. I appreciate his work in that regard.

My hon. colleague raised a number of topics, including the pension system, taxes, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. I will address them all quickly. As for the pension system, the Minister of Finance ensured the sustainability of the pension plan through the agreement reached with the provinces. As for taxes, we cut taxes for the middle class. We also made historic investments in the CMHC.

On top of all those great things the Minister of Finance did, he also acted on the advice of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. He has done so from the very beginning of his time in office, and continues to do so. He even went further than what the commissioner recommended.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Windsor West.

Today we are debating an NDP motion calling on the Minister of Finance to apologize to the House and to Canadians for breaking their trust and calling on the government to close the loopholes he exploited in the Conflict of Interest Act, in order to prevent a minister of the crown from personally benefiting from their position or creating the perception thereof.

There are some people in this life who are clearly lacking in subtlety, and the Minister of Finance is unquestionably one of them. Fortunately, this gave us the chance to note that the minister had placed himself a situation that, at the very least, presented the appearance of a conflict of interest, that he had abused the trust of the House and the Canadian people, and that he had used a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act for his own personal gain.

The Conflict of Interest Act clearly states that:

...a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further his or her private interests...

In the weeks following his election in 2015 and his appointment as finance minister, the minister suggested that he had complied with the Conflict of Interest Act, which, generally speaking, requires members to divest themselves of their shares or to place them in a blind trust if their duties could place them conflict of interest. However, we recently learned that this is not what the minister actually did. Instead, as we finally found out, the minister took advantage of a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to place his half of his shares in Morneau Shepell in numbered companies. In other words, the finance minister no longer holds shares in Morneau Shepell; the numbered company does. However, since he is the sole shareholder in the numbered company, this is just a matter of semantics.

The minister betrayed the trust of Canadians and the House by leading them to believe that he had followed the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act when really he had made use of a loophole. The spirit of the act serves to ensure that those serving in the role of minister do not find themselves in a real or perceived conflict of interest. If he had truly been abiding by the spirit of the act, the minister would have placed his shares in Morneau Shepell in a blind trust or simply divested himself of all of his shares.

Instead, what he did was use a loophole to circumvent the spirit of the act and put himself in a position where he could personally benefit from the policies he implemented as the Minister of Finance. He did that for two years.

None of this passes the sniff test, especially since we are not talking about pocket change here. The shares in Morneau Shepell that the Minister of Finance directly or indirectly owns are valued at over $20 million as of October 20, 2017. It seems to me that any reasonable person standing to become finance minister that owns more than $20 million in shares in a company that bears his name would have seen a huge red flag with the word “danger” flashing in neon lights, and perhaps asked himself whether he should put all those assets in a blind trust so as to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. That all seems like common sense to me.

There is more, however. On October 19, 2016, on the first anniversary of his election by the way, the Minister of Finance introduced and sponsored Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, which would increase the use of target benefit pension plans. The Minister of Finance's former company, Morneau Shepell, is a strong proponent of target benefit plans and manages related services. Those plans are that corporation's bread and butter. Should Bill C-27 pass and come into force, the company stands to be one of only four corporations in Canada that would benefit from the new pension administration rules.

While the current finance minister was in charge of Morneau Shepell prior to being elected, the company lobbied for greater use of targeted benefit retirement plans and became the Government of New Brunswick's lead consultant in implementing its new pension plan.

The Minister of Finance's company would absolutely cash in by helping existing clients switch to targeted benefit plans and producing the annual actuarial valuations that would be mandatory under the new law. The current system requires them only every three years. That would generate even more business for his company. Clearly, as a major shareholder in his company, the minister would derive personal financial gain if this bill were to become law.

The worst of it is that the Minister of Finance is the one sponsoring this bill. Ordinarily, because he still holds shares in a corporation that would directly benefit from the legislation, he should have declared his interest and recused himself from any cabinet discussion of the bill. Instead, he celebrated his first year in office with the gift of bill sponsorship. That is a pathetic way for a Canadian finance minister to behave.

To top it off, within days of the Minister of Finance introducing Bill C-27, Morneau Shepell shares were up almost 5%. We can all agree that that is no coincidence.

I repeat:

...a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further his or her private interests...

We are no longer talking about appearances here. The Minister of Finance is in a direct conflict of interest, but he waited for it to be discovered and for the media to report on it before fixing the problem. On top of that, when he was elected in 2015, the value of the minister's shares in Morneau Shepell was $32.1 million. As of last Friday, as I mentioned earlier, his shares were worth $42.6 million, which means that his shares generated a profit of over $10 million in the past two years. If he still owns half of what he had in 2015, that means an extra $5 million in his pocket, while he is the Minister of Finance.

When the information was made public last week about his shares in the company bearing his name, it took us asking him nearly 20 times before he would finally confirm that he still has considerable holdings in Morneau Shepell, as though he had something to hide. This Minister of Finance is like a kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, with chocolate around his mouth, but who still denies doing anything wrong. This reminds of the time when one of my brothers was caught licking another brother's ice cream cone, and he said that his tongue simply fell on it.

This is not a matter of cookies or ice cream. We are talking about millions of dollars. When the minister finally held a press conference to announce that he would divest himself of his shares, the price of his company's shares dropped by $0.41 in the three following hours, costing the minister an estimated $410,000. It is easy to see why he hesitated to respond and do what was necessary to put an end to this situation, which was strongly perceived as a conflict of interest. How can the minister continue to try to lead us and Canadians to believe that he went into politics for the right reasons and that he is really working in the interests of the middle class and those working hard to join it?

How many middle-class Canadians earn $5 million in two years? We now see why the finance minister was reluctant to tax the wealthiest Canadians. I grew up in a family where my parents had to work hard to make sure that their children had everything they needed in life, and I want to thank them for that here. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I decided to go into politics to help families have the same opportunities that my parents gave me. We are not here to help the rich get even richer.

At the very least, the minister should apologize to Canadians and members of the House for betraying their trust and leading them to believe that he was carrying out his duties in the interest of the public, rather than in his own personal interest. Ministers have lost their limos for far less than this. The government must also immediately commit to eliminating the loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to ensure that the sorts of antics we are seeing today never happen again and that the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act can no longer be circumvented by semantics.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my NDP colleague and everyone else in the NDP and the House who has spoken to this, because it is an extremely important issue that goes to the heart of our institutions here. Frankly, the NDP and the Conservatives will quite often disagree. We have principles that we disagree on, but we do have principles.

Could the member comment on what it will do to the institutions we are here to support if the motion before the House is not supported and members on the other side do not respect the fact that we have rules, that we have the Ethics Commissioner, and that we are not supposed to do something indirectly that we cannot do directly?

Could the member please comment on how important it is to Canadians and the institutions we support here that every member of this House support this motion?

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that we sometimes disagree, but I have to say that, during this Parliament and the previous one, even when I did not agree with what the Conservatives were saying, I understood and I knew in advance what they would say and what they were setting out to do. With the Liberals, I never know what to expect because they change like the wind.

In this case, we are talking about the Minister of Finance. Canadians have to be able to trust the Minister of Finance. If Canada's Minister of Finance finds a loophole that enables him not to break the law but to get around it, that says a lot about how the government does things.

We had the same problem when a Canadian prime minister registered his ships in another country because he did not have to pay taxes there. There is something fundamentally wrong with all this. If a government wants people to trust it, its actions must show that we can trust it. This time, the minister circumvented the rules and found loopholes. That is a poor way to earn anyone's trust.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, whether someone is a New Democrat or a Conservative, this is one of the many different issues that the Minister of Finance has presented to the House. There is a litany of wonderful things, whether it is the tax break for Canada's middle class, enhancement of the guaranteed income supplement, the Canada child program, or the issue of tax fairness. However, there is one common thread on all these issues, and that is we have seen the Conservatives and NDP unite as one in opposition to criticize this government, in particular the Minister of Finance.

My question to the member across the way is related to the Ethics Commissioner. It is her job, Mary Dawson's job, and she has not only reviewed the Minister of Finance but indeed all 338 members of Parliament on the issue. If any of the 338 members of Parliament are outside the law, trust me, Mary Dawson and her office will be in touch. Why should Canadians believe the opposition when we have an opposition who consistently, at every opportunity it gets, criticizes the Minister of Finance? We have an independent office of Parliament that obviously does not have a problem with what the minister has done.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, given that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner told us that there was a problem with the act as far back as in 2013, I would be very surprised if the Minister of Finance did not know about it. I have my doubts about that.

All of the speeches we have heard from the Liberals and all of the questions they have asked have sought to change the channel. Why? I think it is because the Liberals do not want to answer the real question. Perhaps they too have doubts. They are trying to elevate the finance minister to sainthood by listing all of his good deeds. It is as though I broke my sister's doll and, when my mother scolds me, I tell her that it is not a big deal because I made my bed this morning. One has nothing to do with the other. That is exactly what we are hearing from the other side. What they are saying has nothing to do with the question we are asking today. We are asking a question about ethics.

The Liberals are not answering and they are saying that we are the ones who are changing the channel. The Liberals are the ones who are changing the channel.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on this opposition day motion, presented by my colleague. The last bit of exchange was interesting. I hope Mary Dawson is listening to this, because it speaks to the arrogance taking place here in the way she and her office are being used by the government. Theparliamentary secretary just got up and said, “...trust me, Mary Dawson...will be in touch.”

The parliamentary secretary, while espousing the independence of Mary Dawson, has just indicated that she is going to take action. He is giving a directive to this chamber and to the public in general about someone else. This is one of the most disturbing things taking place today. Some of the defence that has been taking place, the shield of the ethics office, which operates under legislation made in this House with the dominance of the Liberal Party and its ethical perversions over the years, still has not resonated that it actually has the capacity to deal with the conflict of interest in this chamber. The member opposite is now suggesting that Mary Dawson is going to contact every single member of Parliament, and to trust him, she is going to do that. The amount of arrogance in that is profound. It comes to the real problem we are talking about, the confidence and trust of the people.

The motion we tabled in the House of Commons is simply to live up to the Liberals' standards and ethics. It is almost like we have to apologize, and Canadians have to apologize that the Liberals dined out on this in 2015. They said they were going to be different than their own selves. In fact, we would often hear their own members contradicting each other on the electoral campaign, including the member for Papineau talking about other Liberals in the past and their past indiscretions in regard to ethics, standards, and behaviours, going back to everything from the Chrétien years to the most recent being the former prime minister, Paul Martin. He was called out for sailing ships with different flags so he could save on taxes, and not actually have the people serving on those ships get the same standards that Canadians deserve in their own workplace. That is reality. That took place. The former finance minister used ships of convenience and flags of convenience of his own registered companies to get lower working standards, lower wages, and avoid taxation for his home country. Shame.

What have they learned from that? They have learned nothing. We are apologizing for the fact that they campaigned that they were going to be different. They said they had changed this time. They were going to drink from the other glass, not the same one they had been drinking out of during the Chrétien and Martin years, with all those ethical breaches and standards they had in the past from Dingwall, to Gagliano, to all those things in the past.

Here we are. They have created their own mess because their own Minister of Finance could not figure out a basic thing that all of us know: when something in front of us seems wrong, usually it is, and do the right thing. We have to stand here and apologize and basically call them out for the fact they have not lived up to what they promised to be.

The motion is crafted in a way to deal with the facts. The first one is “(a) after being elected to Parliament in 2015, led Canadians to believe that he had placed his shares in Morneau Shepell into a blind trust, while never having done so”. It was not someone else who led people to believe that. It was the finance minister.

I am so sorry that the finance minister promised to do something and he never did. I guess it is my fault. I guess it is my colleagues' fault. I guess it is Canadians' fault that he did not do what he said he was going to do. That is what we are talking about here. It was not thrust upon him. It was something he said. He willfully went to the public, built that trust, and said he was going to do that. He never did it.

The second one is “(b) used a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to place his shares in a private numbered company instead of divesting them or placing them in a blind trust”. What is important is, people have seen the key moments in modern history where there have been leaks about individuals using tax havens and loopholes, from the Isle of Man, to Bermuda, to Barbados, and other places.

People have had enough. They cannot get prescription drugs. They have a hard time paying the rent, are worried about the future, and their jobs are more precarious. At the same time, people in our own civil society are using the system that is supposed to defend them. This place, the House of Commons for the common people, has set in place a taxation process to be fair and equitable, and it allows people with an accountant and lawyer to skirt that. It is a cottage industry that has turned into an extreme example of the inequity in society.

This has to end. I hope people take this to heart, because this is the problem that comes with fairness. This system basically defends a colonial system of taxation of the poor versus the wealthy. We have created a system where the better an accountant and lawyer one hires, the less money one pays, even after paying them off, than the neighbour down the street who is trying to do a nine-to-five job and just wants to have 40 hours a week with benefits to make sure their child can go to school in the future. That is what is at odds here.

Look at the wording of the motion. Let us remind ourselves what a numbered company is, by its definition. A general definition states, “Numbered companies may include, but are by no means limited to, new companies that have not yet determined a permanent brand identity, or shell companies used by much larger enterprises for various purposes.”

Therefore, if one can afford a lawyer and a numbered company that does not have a permanent status, purpose, or anything, then one has the chance to shelter their money by using the tax laws, and those accountants and lawyers, to pay less taxes. It does not have to be a good idea or be innovative. No, not at all. It does not have to be any of those things. It could be a villa or something else that one dreams up or creates that then has a number to it.

Ironically, we talk in this motion about Bill C-27, which is the next point on this, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act. That is a conflict of interest, at least on appearances. My goodness, how can we have a finance minister not even understand that recusing himself would be the number one thing?

There is another piece of legislation that has been forgotten in the debate today, which is Bill C-25. Bill C-25 looks at a series of different things that relate to not only pensions but also shareholders and the Corporations Act, to find out how shares can be hidden and sheltered. What the members on the other side did is to create a piece of legislation that buffered the real debate out of Bill C-25 for issues that are complicated, bearer shares and all these different things. They were just more ways to squirrel away the money if you are rich versus that of anyone else. It slid on through here and reinforced that this place is no longer the House of Commons, but a house that represents a taxation system for the few who can have accountants and lawyers.

That bill passed, and we had amendments on it to provide more clarity and transparency. However, what did we get? Why is it that the minister chose random numbers for personal interest? When one looks back at that in the history of time, again, it is about sheltering personal interests. Sheltering personal interests and using the law to do so should not have to be explained here, if one came for that reason. It should not have been taught.

Most importantly, as I conclude here, it is what the Liberals said they would do differently. They said they would be different than themselves. That is who they said they would be different from at that time.

I remember these things. We can go back and watch debates and check out the former Prime Minister Paul Martin and Canadian steamships. This is the second time coming.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary to the government has been talking about how we can count on the Ethics Commissioner to come calling, as my friend from Windsor has also mentioned. My concern is that the ethics code is unenforceable. The Ethics Commissioner is not going to come calling on anyone. When faced with complaints of conflicts of interest, and I have had occasion to raise them myself, I am told that it is pretty much impossible to find anyone guilty of conflict of interest under our code.

I appreciate that this opposition day motion talks about strengthening the code and the powers of the commissioner. I ask my hon. colleague to comment on that.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is very pertinent to the debate. In fact, the Ethics Commissioner is a creature of the legislation in the House of Commons. That is the reality, and the parameters we have set are so confined that the Ethics Commissioner can only do so much. It is both arrogant and interesting that the parliamentary secretary can dictate to members in this chamber the Ethic Commissioner's work. That shows an indifference to the institution as it is. It one of the reasons that it has to be fixed, because people should be up in arms about this, not because of this one occasion but the reality that we have set the system up to do what it is doing right now, and not to be fair.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 6:15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the motion. Shall I dispense?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

[Chair read text of motion to the House]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.