Mr. Speaker, I honestly believe the member for Dufferin—Caledon is too good a lawyer and too good an MP to honestly believe the speech he was sent here to read just 10 minutes ago. He is either using some kind of wilful blindness or he is simply buying into his party's excessive use of the ability to silence another MP, and he is putting his own judgment to the side.
Would he not admit that the Conservatives have found an effective to silence any nuisance MP who might be harping on an issue that is embarrassing to their government? Tragically, our colleague from West Nova is not here to speak on his own behalf because he is barred from speaking on this subject by the Ethics Commissioner under the current court ruling. Does he not agree that what the Conservative Party is engaged in, in an increasingly frequent way, is the time honoured tradition of the corporate SLAPP suit, where one slaps a lawsuit on nuisance critics to shut them up, even if one knows full well that lawsuit is frivolous?
Does he not think we are on the slippery slope, where that will become a frequent thing in the House, since there will be lawsuits flying in both directions, willy-nilly? There will be so much paper flying around we will think we were in a snowstorm, just to silence MPs from being a nuisance, or in other words, doing their job?