Yes, it is a lot of scandal, and it is way too much scandal, because it involves billions of dollars of taxpayer money that has been recklessly spent and has been defrauded from taxpayers.
Mr. Speaker, we as a country can do so much better. We as a Parliament can do so much better.
When the Prime Minister was elected, he issued mandate letters to each of his ministers, in which he demanded that they be transparent and accountable to Parliament. Now this very Prime Minister is violating the very mandates that he had purported to impose on his ministers.
It should not surprise anyone that minister after minister becomes embroiled in their own scandal, like the other Randy scandal that we have been dealing with in the House, where a minister of the Crown got involved in a shady company, pretended that he was indigenous when he is not, and then got government contracts by pretending his company was indigenous when it is not.
It has been said that a fish rots from the head down, and that is an apt description of the government. When the head of a government, the prime minister himself, is not willing to comply with ethical standards imposed by the law and is convicted on two occasions of conflicts of interest, we can expect that all those on his team will follow suit, and here we are today. We have this scandal, one of dozens of scandals.
We as a country can do better, and surely we as a Parliament can do better.