As my colleague suggested, Mr. Speaker, he probably had his hand over his heart when he put this down. It reads:
To be worthy of Canadians’ trust, we must always act with integrity.
He gets breathless, too.
This is not merely a matter of adopting the right rules, or of ensuring technical compliance with those rules. As Ministers, you and your staff must uphold the highest standards of honesty and impartiality, and both the performance of your official duties and the arrangement of your private affairs should bear the closest public scrutiny. This is an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.
Those Liberals have the highest standards. They stand above anybody else. They are demigods of integrity. Now, specifically, this is the injunction they place on themselves with regard to lobbyists and those who seek out special access to them.
There should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties.
Those are the Prime Minister's words.
Of course, the Liberals have completely violated this, but they have not broken the law. The thing is, though, that they have broken their word--absolutely, completely, and flagrantly broken their word. Their words mean nothing, as we can see. On top of that, they have also violated the norms of acceptable behaviour. Even if the Prime Minister had not put that sanctimonious bumph down on paper, the fact is that they violated what everybody thinks are the norms of acceptable behaviour. There is a crime called influence peddling and while this does not meet the technical description, it is clear that is exactly what is going on. The influence of the Prime Minister, the finance minister, and the justice minister are being peddled like so much soap.
This is why so many people have had the incorrect impression that the law was being violated. John Ivison wrote a piece for the National Post last November condemning the Ethics Commissioner for not having cracked down on the Prime Minister and the other members of cabinet for their outrageous behaviour and the commissioner was forced to write back to explain. I have her response from her website on November 30 of last year, entitled, “Response to a column in the National Post: the Commissioner sets the record straight”.
What she sets straight is that she cannot do anything because, outrageous as this behaviour is, it does not violate the actual rules. She goes through the various sections of the law and says, “It is a strange section. It fails to prohibit all preferential treatment, which should be the rule.” This is section 7 of the conflict of interest legislation. She says it should be the rule, but “Section 7 only prohibits preferential treatment that results from the intervention from a third party.” Liberals found a way around the rules, which is another signature of the government. If there is a way of violating the spirit of a rule but not violating its letter, they are all over that.
To be clear, everybody thinks this is either illegal or is astonished to discover that it is not unlawful, and yet it is not. As The Hill Times summarized it:
So [the] Justice Minister...wasn’t breaking any rule by being the guest of honour at the pricey fundraiser organized by a Bay Street law firm. It just smells really bad and violates the spirit of the government’s own code of conduct.
This also explains why, when Nanos, the polling organization, asked Canadians what they thought—