Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member across the way had been listening to my remarks he would know the answer before he made his intervention.
I do not take this lightly at all and I do not think the House does. This is not a normal proceeding. This is something that comes up very seldom, as well it should.
I stand by my words. I believe that different members at different times vote on different things in the House in different ways. However, it is up to each of us to decide what is meant by our vote and defend that to our constituents when called upon to do so.
I reject the fact that all we can do with this particular motion is focus strictly on the motion. If we were to do that, if we were to judge this solely on the basis of the motion in front of us, in my estimation what we would be doing is disavowing everything and every rule that you have ever made, Mr. Speaker, and our feelings about that, whether we support those rulings or not.
I do not want to see a case where every time we turn around someone is bringing forward a motion like this; a different party or a different member. This is serious business. This is not something where every time the Chair rules on a point of privilege or a point of order and we get upset about it because we did not get our own way, that we will bring forward a motion to censure the Speaker. This is much too serious for that.
I think everyone knows that because, to my understanding, the last time this happened was in 1956, a long time ago. That is why in my presentation I said that it was up to each and every one of us to decide what we will base our vote on tonight, to take it very seriously and to very clearly understand in our own minds why we will be voting the way we will and to be prepared to defend that to our colleagues, and, if it is a true free vote, to our colleagues in our own party, to our colleagues in this chamber from all parties and, most importantly, to defend it to our constituents.