Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Winnipeg Centre for his effort to change the channel. However, this is not in fact about the individual, as I keep saying, but about the reasonable perception of conflict. It is not necessarily impugning motives. It is simply asking, “How did this happen? How can you let yourself be the regulatory minister and then make a decision that has an immediate benefit to the tune of $2 million for a company that you regulate?”
That perception is what gives politicians a bad name. That is what we are saying that we need to amend the legislation so that this perception can be removed and we can create a standard that gives the commissioner the tools she needs to do the job. She does not have those tools. She has made 100 recommendations, and they have not been accepted. The ethics committee made a recommendation. It was the Oliphant commission in 2010 dealing with Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber that first recommended that apparent conflicts of interest be added to the act.
This is something that has been sought for a long time. We are hoping that this Parliament takes the job seriously and amends the law accordingly.