I say to hon. members, listen to the facts. Some of them were not here this morning when the minister made his remarks. Of course they did not have notice of it so they probably did not understand it when he delivered it. The minister came into the House and said: "Here are the facts of the case". He produced his letter of March 13, tabled it in the House, and read the letter into the record.
Let me read what the minister's letter says. He says he is writing about a problem and then he said: "I would be most grateful if you could give this application due consideration". Did he say special treatment? No. Did he say fancy treatment, something out of the ordinary? No. He said due consideration. Then he said: "I trust that you will keep me abreast of any developments in this matter and please do not hesitate to contact me should you require additional information", a standard letter that a member of Parliament representing a constituent would send.
If hon. members opposite will not send that kind of letter I suggest to them they are not doing their job for their constituents. Here was a minister diligently doing his duty as a member of Parliament for his constituent.
As he said, he realized that was not the thing for him to do. It came to his attention soon after when another constituent wrote, had noted the letter, and wanted to know if this was support for the application. He wrote back on September 30 and he tabled that letter in the House this morning. Hon. members opposite in their speeches often conveniently neglect to mention this. I tried to remind them in my remarks from my seat, but of course they do not pay much attention to that.
"This is further to your letter of September 20" and so on. He wrote: "My letter of March 15, 1994 to the CRTC simply asked that due consideration be given to the application. It is not intended to convey support for or opposition to the application". He sent a copy of this letter to the CRTC to reinforce the message that this was neither in opposition nor in support. It was a very decent letter and he did it in a timely way.
That is what the minister did. It is not as though he sent this after there had been an exposure of the facts in the press or in the House. He did the honourable thing as soon as he realized there was some mistake. He came into the House this morning and gave this explanation so all hon. members could hear.
As I said earlier, he did not send an advance copy to the Reform Party so maybe they did not understand it. He did not send it to them last night. Maybe they had trouble reading it. I do not know what happened with the Reform Party members. However I invite them to get the blues which are available to them and read the minister's statement. Then they will agree with me that this minister has acted with complete propriety. He apologized for sending the-