Madam Speaker, I will take the liberty to apologize right now for that. We will refer to it as the Prime Minister's report going forward here.
The Prime Minister's report number one, on the Aga Khan, states:
No minister of the Crown, minister of state or parliamentary secretary, no member of his or her family and no ministerial adviser or ministerial staff shall accept travel on non-commercial chartered or private aircraft for any purpose unless required in his or her capacity as a public office holder or in exceptional circumstances or with the prior approval of the Commissioner.
It is very easily laid out. The Prime Minister chose to ignore that and was found guilty.
We move on to the Prime Minister's report number two, which involves SNC-Lavalin. The report concluded that the Prime Minister violated section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act. The report was simply entitled “[Prime Minister] II Report” as it was his second violation, setting quite the tone for the people of Canada.
Then we keep moving on through other members of his cabinet. We have the clam scam report, for lack of a better term, where the Liberal government violated Conflict of Interest laws when it awarded a contract to a company where the wife's cousin had significant influence. Again, that was setting the tone for Canadians.
Next up is the former finance minister. We have the “Morneau Report” number one, with the French villa. He only had to pay a $200 fine. Recently we had Morneau report number two. When he was campaigning he was found in contravention of the Elections Act. What were the consequences of that? It was merely a $300 fine. That is $500 so far in total.
He is implicated in a third scandal, which is ongoing and which many of us here in the House suspect is the reason why Parliament was prorogued by the government. We are also waiting on the Prime Minister's report number three, which we are certain will be coming from this very same scandal.
Once again, why was Parliament prorogued? It was to avoid further scrutiny. That is the way it seems. That is the way Canadians are perceiving this as well.
When we talk about hearing from our constituents, yes, they are all absolutely concerned about the emergency situation that we find ourselves in. However, when we talk about the national unity issue that we face in this country, one of the main objectives that western Canadians see the government undertaking, which undermine the institutions we have, is the ethics breaches, the ethics violations that continue to happen.
Again, it starts at the very top. It did not take very long in the Prime Minister's mandate to be convicted and charged with his very first ethics violation. Then we had number two and we are waiting for report number three. This is a systemic issue within the government, starting from the top and filtering its way down. We are talking here today about a motion on a former member who was not in the cabinet, so it made its way from the top all the way down through all different levels of the government.
What are we going to do as parliamentarians to uphold ethics? The whole notion of the system that we have as hon. members is that we would do the right and honourable thing when we are found guilty of these types of breaches and violations. In particular, the noble thing would be for members to step down. We are serving in public. The public demands and expects the utmost from us as members. We should be held to a higher standard than people who are not in public life.
There is one other point I would like to make to emphasize that. When we look at the Elections Act, if a financial agent makes a simple mistake on a campaign return, they are threatened with jail time, yet when we look at the Morneau report number two, he had only a $300 fine. We need to make sure we have actual teeth in our ethics laws that will dissuade people. Merely being named and shamed, as we talked about earlier, obviously is not doing enough. It is a $300 fine for a second breach. What is going to happen if there is a third or fourth that ever comes out? Will it be $400? I do not know. When we look at the history of its going from $200 to $300, one could assume that is the direction that it is going to go.
In talking about the motion before us, I want to bring up another point from the commissioner's report:
Where I conclude that a Member has contravened the Code and I find no mitigating circumstances, as was the case in this inquiry, I may recommend a sanction for the House to impose on the contravening Member. However, in the present case, given that Mr. Peschisolido is no longer a Member and therefore not subject to the rules governing Members of the House of Commons, issuing such a recommendation would serve no purpose.?
As members of the House of Commons, we must take it upon ourselves to ensure that ethics standards are upheld to the highest degree. Whether one is in Parliament or not, we need to make sure that we are doing something. That is what we are striving to do here today. Our constituents, especially in western Canada, are bringing this issue up. This is an issue that pertains to national unity. We need to ensure that all members of government are holding ethics to the highest centre that they possibly can, because that is what our constituents demand from us.
Going back to the issues that we have from the top down, again, the finance minister held a pretty high portfolio. He was one of the top government cabinet ministers. I have to wonder right now if the most recent cases with the former finance minister will turn out to be similar to the case in front of us here today. Are we going to be discussing this further on down the road? I do not know. Are we going to continue to see what happens with the WE Charity scandal? I do not know.
Again, the government prorogued Parliament to get rid of the scrutiny and the digging that we were doing on the government. I am just wondering where that is ever going to take us.