Yvan Loubier

[Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I shall be brief, as this is essentially a housekeeping bill.

Bill S-3 amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, enhancing the powers of the superintendent to supervise the management of private pension plans.

My party will save its questions and in-depth consideration of certain provisions of the bill for the Standing Committee on Finance. We have a number of concerns about this bill, particularly with clauses like clause 6(3), which provides that pension plan administrators are not liable if they relied in good faith on “financial statements of the pension plan prepared by an accountant”—the type of accountant is not specified—“or a report of an accountant, an actuary, a lawyer, a notary or another professional person whose profession lends credibility to the report”.

There are some very interesting questions for departmental officials.

We also have some reservations about clause 9.2 and intend to clarify the scope of this clause when it is studied in committee. Clause 9.2(8) provides that the arbitrator shall not be bound when there is a dispute, and I quote:

9.2(8) The arbitrator is not bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence in conducting any matter that comes before the arbitrator—

It would perhaps be better for the rules of law and equity to prevail in cases of disagreement over management of a pension fund.

In clause 9.2(15), it would be interesting to have clear answers. This clause provides that the executive of a union shall represent its members, but not its former members, such as retired individuals. There are questions for officials, such as why this does not apply to retired individuals who used to pay into the pension plan. The Bloc Quebecois prefers to ask all these questions in committee.

Generally, however, I can tell you that this bill improves everything to do with the management of private pension plans and could have prevented certain problems of management and responsibility. If provisions such as these had been available in the past, a number of disputes over private pension plans could have been resolved. I am thinking of Singer employers, among others.

I will conclude by saying that, in the course of its work, the Standing Committee on Finance will try to obtain answers to these questions. With reservations, we are in agreement with the general thrust of this bill.

[Budget Surplus, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Prime Minister, but he is not telling the whole truth. The Government of Quebec was robbed of $11 billion, which was needed for welfare and education, as well as health. That is the fact of the matter.

And is it not the government's responsibility to help with some of the damage by giving back what it lifted from the provinces?

[Budget Surplus, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we are headed from a $17 billion deficit to a $4 billion surplus.

This means that the government could have balanced the budget this year even if it had not cut transfers to the provinces by $3 billion in 1997-98.

My question is for the Prime Minister. Does he not understand that the only fair thing to do is to put the surplus back where it came from, in provincial coffers to be used for health, education and social services, and in the pockets of taxpayers, who are being taxed to death?

[Banking, April 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance can say anything he wants, but the fact is that he is watching the train go by while the rest of the world is streamlining operations and has been doing so at an accelerated pace over the past five years.

Is the Minister of Finance prepared to consider the possibility that a special House committee be quickly set up to look at this merger, at its impact on workers, and also at the general attitude of the banks regarding loans, for example?

[Banking, April 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the CIBC and Toronto Dominion banks announced their intention to merge, as did the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank before them. These mergers are the result of market globalization.

Instead of assuming some leadership in this matter, the Minister of Finance put the federal government in a position where it is now trying to catch up to the banks and to this major movement.

How can the Minister of Finance justify the fact that his position and that of his government was not made public two years ago, when the Bank Act was last reviewed and when everyone knew that bank mergers were about to take place?

[Bill C-28, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, for the sake of consistency and especially of transparency, would the Prime Minister tell us if he intends to postpone passage of Bill C-28 at third reading, and to refer the bill back to the Standing Committee on Finance to have this matter cleared up? If he has nothing to hide, he should let the committee do its job.

[Bill C-28, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on February 19, the Prime Minister said we could obtain all the answers to our questions on the appearance of a conflict of interest involving the Minister of Finance and Bill C-28 by raising the issue in the Standing Committee on Finance. So far, however, all our attempts to do so have not succeeded.

How can the Prime Minister explain the difference between his statements in the House and the action taken by the members of his party in committee? They have been doing everything, since then, to prevent us from getting to the bottom of this issue involving the shipowner-lawmaker.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, March 26th, 1998]

Hearing the truth gets them riled up over there, but I will continue to tell the truth. I am too attached to my principles. It is their own business on the other side if they want to say any old thing, but I am going to tell the truth, whether they like it or not.

So, the former Minister of Defence wrote the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board to get an immigration case fast-tracked. The case involved a Canadian citizen who was very ill and wanted her husband to be allowed to come here to look after her. Because of that,

For a humanitarian cause, the Minister of Defence of the time wrote in his capacity as an MP to the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board in order to get the case of the unfortunate sick lady who wanted her husband here to take care of her speeded up. Because this action by an MP, especially by a government MP, that is trying to influence the decision of a quasi-judicial board, is unacceptable from an ethical standpoint, the Minister of Defence of the time resigned. And this was over a humanitarian case.

When we see all that and then we see the scope of the action taken by the Minister of Finance in creating for himself clause 241, which favours his offshore shipping companies, which favours his shipping holding companies and protects them from all claims by Revenue Canada, we say to ourselves “How come there is a double standard?”

How is it that, when the Prime Minister was in opposition, he cited a case that was far less serious than this one, and now there are no more problems? How could he accept the resignation of his Minister of National Defence in 1996 for having behaved in a humanitarian case contrary to the code of ethics? He would not consider any other course of action than to accept the resignation of the minister of defence.

Why is the Prime Minister now, in the more serious case before us, considering it reasonable for a Minister of Finance to table a bill with 14 lines hidden in 464 pages that could give an advantage to his shipping companies and that do favour offshore shipping companies.

There seems to be a bit of a problem. In fact it is a big problem when the government refuses to come clean and orders the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance to reject all requests for witnesses, specialists and ethics counsellors, other than the one paid by the government, who, in passing, is more of an elastic counsellor than an ethics counsellor, in our opinion. The problem is twofold and that becomes serious.

A second issue arose throughout all this, which was refuted, but not argued, by the Minister of Finance when he sputtered out the first day the Bloc Quebecois mentioned this rather interesting discovery about the provisions of clause 241. They objected that “The Minister of Finance's shipping companies will not benefit from the new provisions”.

In fact, three versions were given. In the first, the Minister of Finance said his companies would not be affected because they were Canadian. We wondered why he used that argument and why—with the code of ethics, he had no business discussing this bill or sponsoring it either, and then he goes before the cameras and says that he will analyze it. Already, the minister was violating the government's code of ethics. He was saying that it was a Canadian corporation, that we were totally mistaken, etc.

The vice-president of Canada Steamship Lines—the shipping company owned by the Minister of Finance—said “Maybe they apply to us, but we will not use these provisions. We do not intend to use these new clauses”. The mere fact they were saying they did not intend to use the provisions implied that they had the right to use them and that these provisions could apply to the Minister of Finance's shipping corporations.

Within a day, there was a reversal, a new version was different. And that was just the next day. First, the Minister of Finance said “These provisions do not apply to us, you do not get it at all”. Then the vice-president of Canada Steamship Lines said “We do not intend to use these provisions”, thus implying that the minister's companies could do so and that those provisions did indeed apply to them.

The third version was given to us by Len Farber. It was in reply to the second question which was “Could the minister benefit from the provisions that he is getting passed in the House, yes or no?” Len Farber appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance. At the finance minister's invitation, I met with Mr. Farber in my office the day after our revelations. Far from convincing us, Mr. Farber gave us more reasons to believe that there was indeed a problem.

I met with Mr. Farber in my office, and then he appeared at a finance committee meeting, which was a public meeting, a few days later. We asked him questions, we showed him a corporate organization chart and we told him “Look, we have companies with offices in Montreal, for example, with subsidiaries in various places that are actively involved in international shipping, that also have holdings, that own shares in shipping corporations directly involved in international shipping. Could the provisions of clause 241 of Bill C-28 apply to such corporations?” Mr. Farber did not say yes right away. He is a friend of the Minister of Finance and he is his principal adviser. It was the minister himself who had told us “Go talk to Farber, he will tell you what is going on. You do not understand anything”.

We realized that we understood everything. That was a good start. In the end, to the questions asked by the Bloc Quebecois, Mr. Farber simply responded that, yes, it could apply to businesses like those owned by the Minister of Finance.

From the outset, it was illogical to have an arrangement like clause 241 to attract foreign shipowners operating abroad in international shipping to open up offices in Canada, to offer them tax benefits, to provide them with tax savings, while our own Canadian companies operating elsewhere in competition with these foreign companies coming to set up operations in Canada cannot take advantage of the same arrangements. This is not logical. It takes a really twisted logic to tell us that these clauses did not apply to foreign companies operating in international shipping, but only to foreign companies which we wanted to attract into Canada.

If there are tax advantages to attract foreign shipbuilders, there must also be tax advantages to keep our shipbuilders here in Canada. Logic must come before anything else.

When we questioned Mr. Farber, logic won out. He indicated to us that, yes indeed, it would be possible, it would be necessary to look at the structure of Canadian businesses, where the decisions are made and so on.

The other part of the response came to us two days later. We were not expecting additional arguments for our thesis from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, the hon. member for Stoney Creek. I will quote the hon. member for Stoney Creek if I may. He might gain something from listening to me this morning. With some of his revelations, he is adding to our arguments rather than defending his minister.

On March 23, two days ago, the member for Stoney Creek said as follows:

Around 1990 some foreign shippers, especially in Asia, wanted to open offices in Canada that would create jobs and economic activity.

These foreign shippers were concerned that the 1920s tax rule—we are talking about a tax saving for these companies—was not clear enough. To benefit from the rule a foreign shipper had to be a non-resident.

The Asian companies were concerned that if they opened Canadian offices they would fall under this definition and be found to be resident in Canada.

The clarifying rule was enacted in 1991. It gives foreign shipping companies the assurances that they are not resident in Canada provided their principal business is international shipping and that is where substantially all their revenue comes from.

He is talking about the old 1991 provision. What clause 241 does is not just exempt international shipping companies from taxes, but it also exempts international shipping companies holding shares in offshore shipping companies from paying taxes on dividends.

If everything the parliamentary secretary told us on March 23 is true, why would it not be true in the case of Canada Steamship Lines and Passage Holdings, the blind trust for the Minister of Finance's companies?

We are told that, in 1994, the Minister of Finance put all his assets in a blind trust. The company now managing these assets is Canada Trust, based in Montreal. Canada Trust—as for any offshore shipping company that has just opened offices here—contributes to the economy, creates jobs, and so on. Canada Trust manages shipping and holding companies owned by the Minister of Finance, including Canada Steamship Lines here in Canada and offshore holding companies in Liberia, Bermuda, Barbados, and so on.

What difference is there between the example given by the member for Stoney Creek, parliamentary secretary to the finance minister, and the situation of the finance minister's companies? There is none. Both have an office in Canada, operate in international shipping, have offshore holding companies, and enjoy tax exemptions. Now, their holding companies are going to enjoy exactly the same advantages because of clause 241.

The parliamentary secretary gave us a description of foreign businesses to attract here. The foreign businesses wanting to start up initially in Vancouver, for example, are exactly the same and have the same structure as the businesses and holdings of the Minister of Finance.

There is a problem with these provisions, with the process surrounding the introduction of the bill and with clause 241. There is definitely the appearance of a conflict of interest and I would even go so far as to say there is a real conflict of interest.

The attitude of the government adds to our doubts about its integrity and that of the Minister of Finance. The recent responses by the Prime Minister are very demagogic in this regard.

I asked him a question a couple of weeks ago about his intention to respond to the four opposition parties and requested he establish a special committee of inquiry on the Minister of Finance, on clause 241, on the appearance of a conflict of interest and on the entire process leading to the introduction of a bill. He answered saying, and I quote to be sure I have it right:

The hon. member attends sittings of the Standing Committee on Finance. I suggest he uses that venue to ask whatever questions he may have.

We can ask questions, but anyone with a modicum of intelligence needs someone to ask question to, someone to answer them. We can ask all the questions we like, but if there is no one to answer them we look rather stupid.

That is what is happening in the finance committee. The bill was introduced on February 23. A few days later, as the representative of the Bloc, I personally tabled four motions with the finance committee.

The first motion called for the government ethics counsellor to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance. The Liberal majority supported this motion as did the opposition parties. But when I asked that the Minister of Finance appear before the Standing Committee on Finance to provide explanations, it did not work. The Liberal majority systematically refused and voted against my motion. I got the support of the Progressive Conservative Party, the Reform Party and the New Democratic Party, but I did not get the support of the Liberal majority.

The result was the same when I tabled my third motion, asking that the committee invite members of the board of Canada Steamship Lines, which has been wholly owned by the Minister of Finance since 1988. The Liberal majority voted against the motion. Liberal members were under so much pressure from the Prime Minister's office that if they could have voted three times against the motion, they would have done so.

When I tabled the other motion, in which I asked that the directors of Passage Holdings Inc.—that is the directors of Canada Trust—appear before the Standing Committee on Finance, even behind closed doors, it was the same thing. The Liberal majority said “No way, we do not want to have witnesses shed light on this bill”. But I did get the support of the three opposition parties.

In order to test the democratic sense of the Liberal majority and their desire to shed light on such an apparent conflict of interest, I even tabled a general motion asking that the Standing Committee on Finance invite any witness who could shed light on Bill C-28 and on clause 241.

I was not asking for specific individuals, but for any witness. It could have been a senior official from Revenue Canada, from the Department of Finance, or someone from outside the public service. We voted against it. I had the support of the three other opposition parties, but the government members decided no witnesses would be heard in an attempt to shed light on Bill C-28 and clause 241.

When the Prime Minister stands up in the House and says “The hon. member sometimes attends sittings of the Standing Committee on Finance. I suggest he uses that venue to ask whatever questions he may have”, he is laughing at us. He is laughing at the people. The fact of the matter is that he does not want witnesses to be called. He does not want to get to the bottom of this apparent or real conflict of interest involving his finance minister.

He has the nerve to stand up in the House and tell us to go and ask any question we may have to the finance committee. But they do not want us to call any witnesses to answer our questions.

That is not all. We—and by “we” I mean the Bloc Quebecois, the Progressive Conservative Party, the Reform Party and the New Democratic Party—have sent the chair of the finance committee a joint letter asking that a special committee be struck. This letter was sent more than a month ago, with certified copies to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Deputy Prime Minister and everyone who is anyone in government. We are still waiting for an answer.

A week and a half ago, I sent another letter to the Prime Minister, a letter directly addressed to him, asking that, as suggested by him on February 19, a special committee or a subcommittee of the finance committee be put in charge of shedding light on this matter of conflict or apparent conflict of interest involving the Minister of Finance, and that all the witnesses who could help clarify the matter be called. I am still waiting for an answer.

To me, it is pure hypocrisy to take such an approach, to object to our getting to the bottom of what I consider to be a very serious matter, which puts into question the finance minister's integrity and that of the Prime Minister as well.

Many aspects remain to be clarified in this whole matter. All sorts of contradictory statements were made after the Bloc Quebecois revealed the existence of a certain 14-line provision of Bill C-28 concerning international shipping companies, including the one owned by the Minister of Finance. Many conflicting statements were made by various people.

There has also been much confusion in the reactions of government representatives. One thing is certain, and that is that we are not satisfied with the answers we have been given as to the process, content and real impact of clause 241 because they are completely illogical.

The Minister of Finance and the government have friends all over the place, and the government awards contracts to companies of tax experts. Has anyone heard a tax expert from outside the government—not Len Farber, the finance minister's hatchet man, but an outside expert—say that there is no real or potential problem with clause 241, which amends section 250 of the Income Tax Act regarding international shipping? Has anyone heard a single tax expert express such an opinion since this saga first started?

We have been talking about it since February 23. Not a single tax expert has dared to put his credibility on the line publicly and say that the Minister of Finance was not in apparent or outright conflict of interest and that the structure of his companies was not such as to provide him with undue advantages or tax savings related to clause 241. Not one. This creates even more doubts.

I was waiting to raise this point, but when the Prime Minister himself or the Deputy Prime Minister jump to the defence of the Minister of Finance, a well known member of the government, on a particular matter, it seems to me we might have expected a tax expert somewhere, a friend of the Liberal Party, to come forward and state publicly that there is no problem. Why has this not happened? Because there is indeed a problem.

And it is not the only problem. This bill does not just apply to international shipping. The Minister of Finance has managed to alienate many people in other sectors of activity who would like to be in the same boat as he is, but who are unable to take advantage of the tax savings available to him for his own companies.

That having been said, I would like to move the following amendment at third reading, seconded by my colleague, the member for Châteauguay. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“Bill C-28, Income Tax Amendments Act 1997, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Finance for the purpose of reconsidering Clause 241.”

If the Prime Minister asks his members to vote against this amendment, he will be contradicting himself, because he told us in the House that the Standing Committee on Finance would be able to shed light on the issue and answer our questions. That is what he told us. His handling of this amendment will tell us what kind of Prime Minister he is and whether he is as full of integrity as he claims to be.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, March 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address Bill C-28 at third reading. This is a 464-page omnibus bill which includes various measures to implement the recent budget tabled by the Minister of Finance, along with some tax changes that were announced a few years ago, but died on the Order Paper before the federal election. This is why these provisions are included in the omnibus bill.

On February 23, the Minister of Finance had Bill C-28, of which he is the sponsor, introduced in the House of Commons. In addition to various amendments to our tax legislation, including the Income Tax Act as it applies to corporations and individuals, and to certain measures relating to the minister's recent budget, the bill includes about 14 lines, two small paragraphs, hidden somewhere in these 464 pages, that deal exclusively with international shipping.

As we all know, and as government members have told us again and again, the Minister of Finance is also a shipowner. He owns a fleet of ships abroad, and he is active in the international shipping sector. The minister owns a shipping holding company.

His holding corporation owns shares in companies that are actively involved in international shipping and that are based in Bermuda, Liberia and Barbados, among other countries.

These 14 lines in Bill C-28—which, again, is 464 pages long—are found in clause 241—formerly section 250 of the Income Tax Act and dealing with the tax provisions applying to international shipping companies—and seek to expand the scope of these provisions to corporations that are related to shipping holding companies.

The clause provides that, subject to certain conditions and structures, these international shipping companies will get preferential treatment from Revenue Canada. They will be sheltered from paying any taxes on profits, and now from any taxes on dividends received by the holding companies.

When we look at these 14 lines, the first thing that comes to mind—I repeat this for the benefit of those listening—is how can a finance minister, who is also a shipowner in the international shipping sector, sponsor a bill that could affect his personal interests? That is the first question that springs to mind.

Is he allowed to do that? Did the Minister of Finance act within his authority, in compliance with the government's code of ethics, introduced by the Prime Minister himself and passed in June 1994? Did he act within his authority in introducing a bill, clause 241 of which proposes tax changes that could be advantageous for his offshore shipping companies in Bermuda, Liberia and Barbados?

Answering the first question—because there will be a second—could hardly be easier: we will take a copy of the document called “Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders”. We will look at the provisions concerning the principles that should guide ministers, senior officials, and chairs of commissions and public and parapublic corporations.

We will take them one by one and try to see whether, in this case, the case of a bill containing these 14 lines, two little paragraphs about international shipping tucked away in a 464-page bill, the Minister of Finance did the right thing in sponsoring this bill.

On page 2 of the ministerial code of ethics, we read the following:

Every public office holder shall conform to the following principles:

This is followed by various headings. The first one is “Ethical Standards”. The passage in question reads as follows:

(1) Public office holders shall act with honesty and uphold the highest ethical standards so that public confidence and trust in the integrity, objectivity and impartiality of government are conserved and enhanced.

I would like, if I may, to take a look at this first principle, which is very important. How, from the point of view of the government's integrity, objectivity and impartiality, are we to interpret the fact that, although we have been asking the government for a month and a half now to strike a special committee to look at the scope of clause 241 and the process whereby it was included in Bill C-28, the government has not explained the finance minister's apparent conflict of interest?

Why did the government refuse to reveal all each time we requested it to? At first, we were alone, but then we received the support of the Progressive Conservative Party, the Reform Party and the NDP.

With it systematically refusing to shed any light on this matter, how can we consider the government honest, objective and impartial with nothing to hide? It is already walking all over the first principle of the code of ethics.

The second principle involves public scrutiny. It provides that “Public office holders”—in this case the Minister of Finance—have an obligation to perform their official duties and arrange their private affairs in a manner that will bear the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law”.

With the minister sponsoring a bill that could apply to his private companies, how can we be expected to consider his action so far beyond reproach as to bear the closest public scrutiny when we know that this concerns only international shipping companies? It does not concern engineering firms, for example. It does not apply to oil exploration companies and it does not apply to just any economic sector. It applies only to the international shipping sector.

Not only that, but clause 241 applies particularly to the holdings of shipping companies operating abroad. The Minister of Finance has a holding of shipping companies operating abroad.

This second principle of the code of ethics talks of “bearing the closest public scrutiny”. This does not. The government's claim that this clause is not a tax amendment made to measure for the Minister of Finance does not bear the closest public scrutiny.

The third basic principle in the code of ethics concerns private interests. It states as follows:

Public office holders shall not have private interests, other than those permitted pursuant to this Code, that would be affected particularly or significantly by government actions in which they participate.

An examination of clause 241 of the bill sponsored by the Minister of Finance indicates that this principle of the conflict of interest code is being ridden roughshod over. The Minister of Finance is a legislator and therefore has definite influence over legislation concerning international shipping, the area in which he is involved. He can influence government activities for the benefit of his shipping companies, and this is what he has done with clause 241 of Bill C-28. Clause 241 will impact upon the financial performance of his companies.

This principle, adopted in June 1994 as part of the government's conflict of interest guidelines, has already gone by the board.

The final principle is public interest. It states the following:

On appointment to office, and thereafter, public office holders shall arrange their private affairs in a manner that will prevent real, potential or apparent conflicts of interest from arising—the conflict shall be resolved in favour of the public interest.

Not only do we believe that there is, at the very least, an apparent conflict of interest, which is serious according to the code, because it speaks not only of real or potential conflict of interest, but also of apparent conflict of interest. We are not the only ones to believe there is, at the very least, an apparent conflict of interest. Even the person responsible for ethics, Mr. Wilson, the governmental ethics adviser, ministerial even, one might say because, in our opinion, his evaluations are somewhat biased—he is paid by the people he has to defend—has appeared before the finance committee, has even prepared and submitted a report, and admits there could be an apparent conflict of interest.

He has said that, had he been consulted as ethics adviser, the bill would have been introduced differently than it was by the Minister of Finance. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, all the government members, have told us “Go consult Mr. Wilson, and he will tell you there is no problem”. Yet even Mr. Wilson says “There was, at the very least, an apparent conflict of interest. The process was flawed and things ought not to have been done that way”. This has happened more than once, moreover.

The Prime Minister boasted that he had seen nothing two years ago. Sometimes the Prime Minister is really funny. He sometimes has a really funny way of reasoning.

Two years ago, a bill was introduced, which contained a provision similar to clause 241, but it eventually died on the Order Paper when the election was called. We did not notice it at the time, probably because nobody felt like reading through the 464 pages of an omnibus bill, but the second time around, we did.

The Prime Minister bragged about it on two separate occasions. First, he said there was no ambiguity because the bill was introduced by the Minister of Finance himself. Not only did he sponsor it, he introduced it. And, again the other day, the Prime Minister said they had done the same thing two years ago and “the opposition did not even notice it”. Great philosophy, great moral and political ethics.

So, coming back to the ethics counsellor, in his evidence before the Standing Committee on Finance, Mr. Wilson told us there was indeed an apparent conflict of interest. What happens when four out of the five principles supposed to govern the Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders are trampled on as I have just demonstrated? One must refer to page 16 of the code.

What does it say on page 16? It states that “Where a public office holder does not comply with Part II, the office holder is subject to such appropriate measures as may be determined by the Prime Minister, including, where applicable, discharge or termination of appointment”. None of this has ever happened.

We are not asking for the minister's resignation, at least not yet. But we are running out of patience. It is really hard to hold back. The government's refusal to shed light on these very important questions and the Prime Minister's hypocritical suggestion in the House that we should seek an answer from the Standing Committee on Finance, where we are being gagged, are starting to get to us.

We are asking the government to shed light on this matter. We have just demonstrated, by quoting directly from the code of conduct without any interpretation, that four out of five principles have been trampled by the finance minister's sponsoring of Bill C-28 and that clause 241 might give an unfair advantage to the shipping companies he owns.

Howard Wilson has recognized, at least once in writing, that there was a problem, an apparent conflict of interest. He may not have said it again, but as we have seen in the past, he is more of an elastic counsellor than an ethics counsellor. He gives a very broad and very flexible interpretation of the code of ethics when his boss, the Prime Minister, asks him to save the neck of one of his ministers.

There are precedents. We found a few. There are precedents where a public office holder, a finance minister or other public office holder, was forced to resign over a lesser matter than this, over situations that were less obvious and less worrisome from a conflict of interest point of view.

In 1985, a case was raised by the Prime Minister, then the member for Shawinigan, who was then in opposition. He asked the Prime Minister of the day, Mr. Mulroney, for the head of the Minister of Finance, Michael Wilson, who he said was in conflict of interest, one of his brothers-in-law having been awarded a $240,000 contract, something that was ultimately never proved.

He cited the example of an Ontario finance minister who, in the 1980s, had resigned immediately after revelations that he had allegedly relaxed the normal rules in granting a permit for a company owned by his family. And the minister had never seen this permit. He had never had anything to do with granting this permit.

But, as this finance minister, Darcy McKeough, had recognized, a finance minister's performance is subject to criteria of very high integrity—not just integrity, but very high integrity—because of the nature of his duties. He had therefore preferred to hand in his resignation immediately to avoid any further doubts about his government's and his own integrity.

I will describe the case again. It was something very simple and not serious in itself. A company owned by an Ontario Minister of Finance was issued a permit. The minister had never seen the file, nor was he the one to sign the permit. The Minister, not wishing to place anyone in his government in an awkward position, and not wishing any doubt to be cast on his integrity, immediately resigned.

There is a more recent case, this time in defence. Everyone will recall that the Minister of Defence was obliged to step down in March 1996, not because he was a bad minister—although at the time we felt he was and we were calling for his head—but because he had written to the Immigration and Refugee Board—

[Budget Implementation Act, 1998, March 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, when I heard my colleague speaking about the favourable reception given the millennium scholarships in Quebec by students, and so on, I took exception because this is not the case at all. Not only were the millennium scholarships not warmly received, but they were almost completely rejected in Quebec. I therefore did say he was a liar.

As requested, I withdraw my words because they are unparliamentary, but they represent my firm belief.