Mr. Speaker, I will refer to him as the person who just finished speaking. Is that any better?
Never mind Jesse James or whatever that was. It is like Homer looking after Bart Simpson over there. We are seeing that on an ongoing basis.
I want to address the issue that the person who just finished speaking brought up. It is the issue of comments made during the election by one of my colleagues, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
Is it not interesting to note that when comments are made outside of this place there is no legal protection for any member? If the party opposite was so incensed in its rather thin skinned approach to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, who was at the time a candidate for re-election for the Liberal Party, why did it not simply do something about it? The comment was not made under the protection of the House of Commons. That party has access and recourse to the legal system if its members feel they have been slandered in some way.
The comment that was made was based on the fact that over the years enough things have been said by people purporting to represent that party and its predecessor such that an image has been created within the broader public in Canada that it attracts people with some unusual, perhaps to be kind, fringe ideas.
I recall during the election campaign having a very fine gentleman representing the Alliance Party running against me in my riding of Mississauga West. He was a member of the Chinese community, in fact, the president of the Chinese Association of Mississauga. I remember how upset he was at an all candidates meeting about the comment that came from one Betty Granger, a candidate for that party, who talked about the Asian invasion.
Members can imagine how my opponent, being of Asian extraction, reacted and how he felt in regard to that kind of insensitive comment. That is the problem and that is what the minister, the candidate at the time in Thornhill, was referring to. So if those members opposite want to say that she did not have a right to make those comments, I beg to differ, and they have a right to take action.
Let me share another example of what is, in my view, unethical behaviour, a statement that I am quite prepared to make either in this place or outside this place. I am referring to the current Leader of the Opposition who, when a member of the Alberta legislature, wrote a letter—he did not say this in the Alberta legislature—to the editor slandering a lawyer who was representing a person who had been charged, not yet convicted, with pedophilia.
The implication in the letter written by the Leader of the Opposition, the implication that people took, was that somehow this defence attorney was in support of pedophiles because he had the gall to represent someone who had been charged with a criminal act. Do members see the fundamental problem with that? He did not say it exactly. It was implied. The court seemed to agree that the implication was there because it forced the Leader of the Opposition into a settlement.
If the Leader of the Opposition was not afraid of having his day in court, why did he settle? I presume he received advice from his lawyers who told him he was in deep trouble and that he had better cut a deal, settle and get out.
The fundamental principle in our justice system is that whether we like the charge or not, whether or not in our opinion the person is as guilty as we can imagine, it is not up to him and it is not up to any one of us to sit in judgment of a fellow citizen who has been charged but has not yet had their day in court or had an opportunity to present a defence and tell his or her story.
That did not seem to matter to the then member of the Alberta legislature. He felt that it was very justifiable, outside of the protection of that chamber, to publicly castigate this person.
If we want to talk about ethics, I think it is indefensible for him to make that kind of assertion as someone who has tried to stand tall as a member of the Alberta legislature in a very important position, who I believe was a minister of labour, who certainly was a finance minister, who worked in that distinguished position in that distinguished facility and who was entrusted with the confidence of the people of his riding.
I do not know how anyone, including that particular member, can defend it. It grates on us a bit on this side of the House to see someone who actually did that stand here and lecture us about ethics. I do not know that they on that side understand the implications of the word.
Then he left town and came to Ottawa as the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, leaving behind him a bill for the taxpayers as a result of the settlement that was made as a result of the letter that he wrote. As a result of the unethical practice of castigating a member of the bar in the province of Alberta and attacking that person with his personal views, he left behind an $800,000 tab for the taxpayers in Alberta to pick up.
There is a former attorney general from Alberta in the House. I find it hard to believe that the hon. gentleman can stand with a straight face or can stomach the activity by the person who is now his leader.
To give members another example of this holier than thou populist prairie preacher who comes into the House of Commons pretending to be the new sheriff in town, pretending he is going to change the way we do things, this is the fellow—