Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the opposition House leader for concurring in this report and basically presenting the case for why it is important to have debate today on the Prime Minister's ethical breaches. It is not just us saying it. It is the Ethics Commissioner saying it.
Before I go on, Madam Speaker, if I could have your help on this, I will move an amendment to the motion at the end of my speech. If I am given the warning of one minute, I will be happy to move it then.
We are here today because of what's called “The Trudeau Report”. It was made under the Conflict of Interest Act and the Conflict of Interest Code for members of the House of Commons. It was tabled before the House in late January. Within it, we found that the Prime Minister, in fact, was guilty of breaking the ethical standards set in law.
It is not a spirit thing. It is not something the opposition would like to see. It is not something that members outside of the House believe is important. It is literally an act of Parliament that was passed, with guidance documents, which the Prime Minister signed, provided to all of his ministers. In the report, the Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister broke four specific parts of the act.
Before I continue, I will also mention that I believe it is the first time a prime minister, in the history of Canada, has been found guilty of breaking not just any law but the ethics rules that all of us have to abide by, including members of the government. The front benchers and the members of the cabinet have to live by the rules. It is even worse that the person who is supposed to lead them, the person who is supposed to represent all of them, the Prime Minister, broke these rules. What kind of example does it set for the rest of the cabinet ministers when their own leader breaks the rules and shows no contrition whatsoever about having done so and makes no amends whatsoever to fix the matter?
There is a saying, “Every day brings forth its own sorrows.” That is a Yiddish proverb. I had my own sorrow on Sunday and Monday when all my flights kept being cancelled and I could not get here, but today I believe it is going to be the sorrow of the Prime Minister, because he is in a particular situation where he has done nothing to address his ethical lapses.
I am old enough to remember that this is indeed the same old Liberal Party of Canada, the same old people who are involved. I remember Adscam. I remember the Gomery inquiry. Justice Gomery did a fantastic report at the time. We are having a repetition of the same ethical lapses of 10 to15 years ago. It is absolutely ridiculous that we find ourselves here today. I also think this is the first time we have had concurrence in an Ethics Commissioner's report to the House that highlights the ethical lapses of the Prime Minister.
There are five things a Toronto Star article mentioned that I think draw attention to the importance of having this debate today, because ethics do matter. We cannot just wash it over. Ethics do matter.
The Aga Khan did not meet the definition of a friend under the law. The Prime Minister broke the rules on gifts. The flights that were taken were an issue. I am going to go into that just a little bit more, because the Ethics Commissioner went into the details of what the Prime Minister's lawyers were saying in an interpretation of the law that I think most Canadians would find absolutely ridiculous. Finally, the Prime Minister failed to recuse himself from talks that gave him an opportunity to further the interests of the Aga Khan.
The investigation started because the former chair of the ethics committee wrote a letter. It was the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, a Conservative member of Parliament, who pointed out to the Ethics Commissioner the potential ethical breaches in the behaviour of the Prime Minister. I remember that at the time, that side of the House, including very specific parliamentary secretaries, were saying that this was not an issue. They were asking why there was a focus on a vacation trip when we should be focusing on jobs, the economy, and all these other things.
However, ethics matter, especially in leadership. Role models Canadians look toward for ethical decision-making, who are leading the country, should be held to the highest possible standard. More so, they should set the bar even higher for themselves and do so in a very public manner. When they cannot even meet the bar they set, and they cannot even meet the bar set by the House of Commons itself, it becomes a matter the House should consider through concurrence in the report.
In that report, the Ethics Commissioner said,
There was nothing unusual, unforeseen, or unavoidable about this trip. [The Prime Minister] was well aware, given his previous stay on the island in 2014, that private transportation was needed to reach the Aga Khan's private island.
One of the points the lawyers tried to make was that actually, this ethical breach, which the Ethics Commissioner said was a violation of the law, was unavoidable. The lawyers claimed that there was no way to plan around this. The RCMP needed to do it.
The Prime Minister knew in 2014 that if he went to this island, it would be exactly the same situation. The Ethics Commissioner said it was unavoidable, that he should have known better. The Prime Minister contravened sections 5, 11, 12, and 21 of the act. The Ethics Commissioner found that he failed to meet the general duty found in section 5, because he vacationed on the Aga Khan's private island.
Section 11, which is the purpose of my amendment, deals with the gifts that were received during this trip. The Prime Minister accepted hospitality and gifts and the use of the private island that personally benefited him. He never cleared it with the Ethics Commissioner ahead of time. He just did it, and after the fact, he claimed that he had learned a lesson and that it probably will not happen again. How can we trust that? He showed no contrition. He made no attempt to modify the law to live up to the higher standard he set for cabinet ministers.
Section 12 prohibits ministers and members of their families from accepting travel on non-commercial charter or private aircraft. By the way, the lawyers quibbled over the definition in French and English, aircraft versus avion, in the report. That does not cover helicopters. I find it absolutely ridiculous that the Prime Minister would instruct his lawyers to make that type of defence, but it is in the report itself. Any Canadian can read it and see it in black and white.
The Ethics Commissioner said,
[The Prime Minister] contravened Section 12 when he and his family accepted travel provided by the Aga Khan on a private aircraft. The travel was not required as part of his official duties, the circumstances were not exceptional and he did not seek the prior approval of the Commissioner.
Last, “the Prime Minister contravened Section 21 when he failed to recuse himself from two discussions during which he had an opportunity to improperly further the private interests of” the Aga Khan.
As the opposition House leader has said, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan himself do a lot of good work, charitable work, all around the world. It is not incumbent upon the Aga Khan to recuse himself. It is incumbent upon the Prime Minister to recuse himself. He is the person responsible for ensuring that he does not find himself in a conflict of interest. All members of cabinet have to live up to this higher standard, a higher standard set not only by the Prime Minister but also by the House of Commons through the ethics legislation that was passed in 2006, with mass party support. We all agreed at the time that the ethical bar had to be raised, and indeed, it was raised.
It is interesting that now we find ourselves in this situation, 12 years after that truly historic and monumental piece of legislation came down. It was the first piece of legislation put forward by the Conservative government in 2006. It set forth new ethical rules that all members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, and the prime minister were expected to live up to.
The Prime Minister has failed to live up to those standards, and now we find ourselves today concurring in a report from the Ethics Commissioner to draw the attention of Canadians to the Prime Minister's lack of ethical standards and his complete inability to show any contrition or make amends or propose modifications to the rules to ensure that this will never happen again. It may quite easily happen again.
There is also the issue of the gifts. We do not know what the illegal gifts were. As the opposition House leader said, members of Parliament and Canadians have a right to know what they were.
I see that my time is up. I would like to move the amendment I spoke of at the beginning of my remarks. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “THAT” and substituting the following: the report of the Ethics Commissioner, entitled “The Trudeau Report”, tabled on Monday, January 29, 2018, be not now concurred in, but that, pursuant to section 28(13) of the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, it be referred back to the Commissioner with instruction that he amend the same to include recommendations to close the loopholes in the Code, as well as the Conflict of Interest Act, that allowed the Prime Minister to withhold from the public the nature of the unacceptable gifts he received from the Aga Khan because the public registry includes only acceptable gifts within the meaning of section 14 of the Code and Section 11 of the Conflict of Interest Act.