Madam Speaker, I will say, with great respect to the member, that we are seeing some rather common verbiage coming from different members of the government, certain phrases that are repeated over and over again, which is interesting to observe.
I want to probe one aspect of the government's conversation on this, and that is that we repeatedly hear this idea that we should not be talking about ethics, that we should be talking about other things. The subtext is that ethics really are not that important, so why are we not talking about other issues.
There are many other issues that are important, but Canadians are legitimately concerned about being governed by people who set high ethical standards. The biggest reason for that is that if people show a lack of ethics in the things that we do see, then my constituents certainly wonder about the things that they do not see and whether decisions with respect to the economy and foreign policy are actually being made with their best interests at heart.
If we see a government that is profoundly informed by conflicts of interest, whether that is cash for access fundraising or whether that is accepting an illegal vacation, then it leads people to question the broad range of government policies. They can see how perhaps the government's decision-making process is not correctly informed by the public interest, rather it is being inappropriately informed by private interests.
I wonder if the member could just clarify her views on this. Does she think we should be discussing the government's bad ethical behaviour in the House, or does she think Canadians should just shrug and not worry about the ethical foibles of the government?