Liberal MP Greg Fergus was elected new House Speaker after a Tuesday vote in the House of Commons among all Members of Parliament.

Fergus becomes the first House Speaker to have broken an ethics law. Earlier this year, Fergus wrote a letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), where he urged the board to approve a small television company’s request for mandatory carriage in Quebec.

MPs are allowed to write letters of support to the CRTC, but under parliamentary rules, parliamentary secretaries and cabinet ministers cannot. 

This blatant ethics violation prompted then-ethics commissioner Mario Dion to call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to require mandatory ethics training for all Liberal cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries.

Dion further said, “As a parliamentary secretary since 2015 and having served for several years on both the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, Mr. Fergus should be well versed on the functioning of both regimes and the importance of consulting the Office.”

“I am quite concerned that someone with the breadth of experience of Mr. Fergus would fail to recognize the possibility of a contravention,” Dion added.

Fergus later said he made an “unintentional error” and insisted that his letter of support was intended to “ensure that Black Canadians see themselves reflected in Parliament.”

Fergus is a supporter of the radical Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and has often referred to Canada as systemically racist.