Mr. Speaker, when this crisis was raised in the House, we felt as a party that it must not be treated lightly. After several days of watching what you have had to go through, we felt it was important that a motion be proposed in the House to refer a case as serious as this to the committee on procedure.
I know that, generally, the chair of the committee is a reasonable man. The important point to be raised is that they want to restrict us to very specific statements. I believe we must take advantage of this debate to try to broaden the scope and to draw conclusions from these actions. The Reform Party and the government party both tend to want to treat this reference to the committee as something superficial.
I believe we must take advantage of this opportunity to draw constructive conclusions for the benefit of our country's future. Certain behaviour must be stopped. We know that there have been provocations for the past 25 years throughout the country, and this has contributed to a growing discontent that threatens to break this country apart.
Conclusions must be drawn from these events. I therefore wanted to speak this morning in order to ask some of the witnesses whether they considered attitudes like theirs—flags in the House—and statements like those they made to be of such a nature as to bring Canadians closer together. Unfortunately, the Chair rose, interrupting me, and stated that this was not part of the reference.
If something positive is to come out of these events, all of our colleagues responsible for these actions and words should realize what they have done. This is serious, as we have been saying for the past 25 years.