Speaking to the subamendment, Mr. Chair--I'm more than prepared to do so--I attend a lot of hockey games and of course soccer games in the summer, and I compare this a lot to what we call “referee baiting”. It's often evident at hockey games that certain teams will continually point out to the referee...not necessarily infractions, but moves that they dislike the other team using, whether they're hard bodychecks, trapping, or whatever. But if you continually yell at the referee and continually bait the referee, saying, “That's wrong. That needed a penalty. Where was the penalty on that call?”, then eventually, after a hard bodycheck that really is.... Canadians will recognize that this happens a lot in international hockey. We usually blame the referees of some of the foreign countries we may be playing, but it certainly happens much more there.
Here we are talking about...exactly at this level. Here we have the Liberal Party yelling at the referee--in this case, Elections Canada--saying, here's a practice we all do, we all have legitimately done, that through many elections all parties have done, yet let's yell at the referee in this case. Let's yell loud and hard and see if he blows his whistle and we get a call. That's in fact what the Liberal Party is attempting to do in this case, referee-bait with Elections Canada and say, if we point at something long and hard and yell long and hard about it and continually point it out, even though we've done it ourselves or certainly have very similar practices, perhaps we can get a penalty called.
It happens a lot in a hockey game. A hard bodycheck will happen, or through trapping, something will happen. Then the screams come up from the home side, of course, that it was wrong. The referee, knowing no better, blows his whistle and drags someone off to the penalty box, and somebody wrongfully accused of a penalty gets two minutes. And of course, the team that yelled the loudest and got the call snicker behind their gloves or in their helmets--look at what we were able to do because we yelled long enough at something that was perfectly legitimate, but it must have been the other team's turn to get a penalty”
In this case, that's what we're getting. We can't find anything wrong, so let's just yell long and hard at what has been done by all parties over time, what has been done by all of us, legitimately so, and covered under Elections Canada. If we yell loud enough this time, somehow someone will find something wrong with it. And that's exactly what's being attempted here.
So I say shame on the Liberal Party. Let's just play by the rules, carry on, and continue to serve the people of Canada as best we can under the rules of Elections Canada, as we all have, and quit baiting the referee toward this.
But if they feel they must go forward, that we must go forward and examine this case--because if they've yelled loud enough there must be something wrong--then let's move forward on all parties, as the subamendment we're looking at now states, not just the Liberal Party but the other parties in the House also. Lets make sure we have a thorough examination of all the parties and of what are legitimate election expenses. And as we say, we will be proven to be absolutely accurate in what we've been able to do, as my colleague said, whether it's regional media buys or whatever, and these constituencies will legitimately be returned their money from an election spending point of view and be proven to have justly followed the rules.
Mr. Chair, I think it's important that we do state now that it is all parties being looked at and not just one, as was asked for by the referee-baiting Liberal Party, or even as we mistakenly did in our amendment, which was to call for only their books to be looked at. Let's look at everybody's to make sure we're all doing the same thing and following the same rules.
Mr. Chair, I yield the microphone to one of my colleagues.