I could have more of that excellent House of Commons coffee.
The point here is that we have quote marks on this. I raised an earlier concern about the use of quotes around the word “political”. I want to explain that this is different. My concern was that the use of quote marks might imply sarcasm. It might look like ironic quotes, the print version of air quotes. But the opposite is going in here—this is quotation for precision.
I've long maintained, and I think today is a good chance to reiterate this important point, that when you can quote, it's always preferable to paraphrasing. It's something we sometimes forget about, and we find ourselves making paraphrases that lose a bit of the precision that was there initially. They also cause us to lose the ability, as readers, to be certain of whether this was intended as a precise repetition or a general summation of what was being said.
In this case, putting the actual quotation in allows for absolute certainty of precision, and ensures that this paragraph is an accurate reflection of what had been said by Mr. Walsh. It's pretty important, because he is our legal counsellor for the House of Commons.
Those are my thoughts on the amendment to the amendment.