Mr. Speaker, I am sure you would not be surprised to hear that we already have a good, ethical government, a government that understands and appreciates the importance of accountability and transparency. The opposition parties saying this is a scandal does not make it a scandal.
Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to participate in a lot of the discussions on this topic, primarily because of other commitments, but I would not concede to the official opposition that there is this huge scandal. It is interesting when my friend references, as he did today in his three or four minutes, that this is the first Prime Minister who has been held in violation by the Ethics Commissioner. There is nothing of that nature.
It was Stephen Harper who brought in the Ethics Commissioner, so it is not as though the commissioner was there for other prime ministers. However, the member tries to give the impression that we have a really bad prime minister. The Ethics Commissioner, after all, found a couple of examples where the Prime Minister made some mistakes, which the Prime Minister owned up to. He apologized where he needed to apologize.
The focus of the Conservatives in opposition, since day one, has always been what I would classify as character assassination. They do not care what the policies are. They go after the Prime Minister, the minister of finance, or any minister, and talk scandal, whether it exists or not. That is what they want to talk about.
The member referenced the filibuster, saying the Liberals are bad because we have been doing 40 hours of filibustering, as the Conservatives are being somewhat mischievous and looking under every rock for a scandal. They are calling for civil servant after civil servant to go before the committee. I think my colleagues did a good job of ensuring that this government continues, even though the opposition continues to look for made-up conspiracies, in some cases.
We continue to be focused on the coronavirus. That has been clearly demonstrated. While Conservatives would rather have civil servants answering questions about conspiracy, we prefer civil servants doing what they do best, which is serving Canadians by minimizing the negative damage of the coronavirus. That has been our priority, and that has been demonstrated with the many programs we have introduced.
We have been talking a lot about vaccinations lately, and justifiably so. I asked the Conservative opposition during debate the other day where the thousands of questions about the vaccination issue were during the summer, in July and August. No, they wanted to fan this whole notion that there is this huge scandal. There was no huge WE scandal. Yes, there were some mistakes, and those mistakes are very well established, but the government continues to focus its attention on the pandemic.
As much as the Conservatives try to divert our attention, we are continuing to focus on the coronavirus. I would encourage my friend to try to influence his caucus colleagues to do likewise.