Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary claimed that the minister addressed the matter. The minister has done no such thing. Indeed, the minister has refused to stand in the House to answer a single question, and when I asked him a question at committee, he misdirected by falsely claiming that it had been cleared by the Ethics Commissioner when the arrangement clearly had not been.
Here are the facts: The minister was being paid by a firm owned by his business partner that was lobbying his own department, and it secured $110 million in federal grants for its client. That smacks of a conflict of interest. Is the parliamentary secretary comfortable to stand in the House to tell Canadians that this is the low ethical bar set by the government?