Madam Speaker, last week, for the second time in two weeks, I asked the Prime Minister if he would recuse himself from the process of appointing a new ethics commissioner. In fact, I had asked whether he was signalling things to come when the Liberals appointed a former Liberal provincial cabinet minister to be the official languages commissioner. I then asked what was next. Were they simply going to appoint a Liberal to be the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner? The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is currently investigating the Prime Minister and the investigation is likely to carry on and not be complete when her term concludes.
The answer that I got from the parliamentary secretary for multiculturalism was really to ignore the question, which was about the process of appointing an ethics commissioner. Instead, the parliamentary secretary dwelled on defending the official languages commissioner appointment, which was bizarre, indefensible, and not relevant to the question that I had asked, which was whether or not the Prime Minister was going to appoint a Liberal.
The Prime Minister at least did the correct thing insofar as he went when he recused himself from the process of appointing a new ethics commissioner, but he directed the government House leader to appoint the new ethics commissioner. The government House leader is the same House leader who has stood in the House for months defending the unethical conduct of the Prime Minister, who appoints her. She is the one who, in the House, has taken on the responsibility of defending every bit of unethical conduct by her government and is now in the position of appointing the new ethics commissioner.
The conflict of interest at play here is so obvious to everyone, so obvious to all Canadians, and yet the answer that I received when raising this question was that our two official languages are at the heart of who we are as Canadians, but so is redefining the process by which we select highly qualified Canadians. It is a strange statement when we talk about whether an appointment process is as important as our official languages are, but both are irrelevant as my question was whether or not the government is going to have an actual transparent, fair, and proper process for appointing officers of Parliament.
There are three officers of Parliament whose terms will expire this summer: the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; the Commissioner of Lobbying, who, by the way, also has an open investigative file into the conduct of cash-for-access fundraisers and Liberal lobbyists who attend and organize them; and the Information Commissioner, whose term expires in July. The Information Commissioner, at the ethics committee, expressed her disappointment over the President of the Treasury Board's failure to keep an election promise and enact any recommendations that have been made to reform access to information.
I ask again tonight, will the government assure Canadians that it will have a proper and actual transparent process to replace the Ethics Commissioner?