Mr. Speaker, the rules are the rules.
When I started my remarks, I talked about the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, even when a minister has a conflict of interest screen wherein the chief of staff gets to decide when a minister can or cannot engage about a company in which the minister has millions of dollars worth of assets. We need to change the rules so that the minister is not dependent upon an employee to signal yea or nay, but rather has clarity, as other legislation provides, so that when a situation arises in which the minister owns shares in a company, but the company is actually at the issue and not the individual, there is clarity about what controlled assets are directly and indirectly held.
The technical loophole that allowed the situation to occur is one that the Ethics Commissioner has frequently said needs to be addressed. We are simply saying in this motion that this should be clarified and the rules be changed so that this kind of situation is not allowed to occur again.