Madam Speaker, there have been so many days when I have seen that the primary objective of the official opposition was character assassination. Its members will constantly go all out to try to identify an issue as an ethical breach, as if the Conservatives, the New Democrats or any other political party has never done anything wrong. Members need to be careful when they throw stones in glass houses.
The member cited how the Minister of Finance broke the code of ethics. We respect what the commissioner ruled on that. Does the member know that the Minister of Finance did not intentionally do what the member is proposing he did? In the case of that so-called French villa, it was shortly thereafter that the fact that the Minister of Finance had a house in France was published in a major newspaper here in Canada. There was no attempt to intentionally hide it.
Yes, sometimes mistakes happen. Members of Parliament on all sides of the House make mistakes, and the commissioner investigates them and comes up with recommendations. To try to give the illusion that there is only one political entity that makes mistakes inside this House is a false impression. There are mistakes made on all sides of the House. When a mistake is made, we need to recognize it and take corrective action. That is what we have seen with this government.
If the member wants to talk about proactive measures, I would remind him of the proactive disclosures we made with respect to the allowances of all members back when we were the third party in this House. We had to literally drag the Conservatives into supporting proactive disclosure. This Prime Minister and this government have taken the responsibility of being open, transparent and accountable very seriously. I would argue that this is something this government has been very good at, especially if we compare it to the Stephen Harper era. We have seen much more open government, transparency and accountability, which was lacking when Stephen Harper was the prime minister.