Mr. Speaker, the passion I feel and evoke over the issue is because of the stunning reversal of the leader of Her Majesty's opposition to the position for which the critic has consistently put forward and fought. These people can call that whatever they want. I will call it at the very least a reversal, an admonition, a bailing out, whatever members want me to call it in acceptable parliamentary language, and I am happy to live by that. The fact still remains that what we saw today was unfair to the critic on that side of the House. It was really quite remarkable.
I also heard in that same speech the need to define a refugee. How in the world can someone who purports to want to be prime minister of this land not know that that was done by the Geneva Convention in 1949 and that the United Nations has long recognized worldwide refugees.
We do not need to define a refugee. We need to define some kind of leadership who understands how important it is that we reform the immigration system and the refugee system. We need to ensure that we can close the back door and boot out the criminals who are a danger to our society. We need to open our arms wide to both refugees and immigrants in all classes, family classes and economic classes from around the world.
What we need to do is some serious education within the confines of these walls to understand that the work a committee does is so vital to forming the final document which will come before this place for a vote. For someone to stand up having done obviously no research and with no knowledge, understanding or empathy for his own critic and the work he has done is absolutely shameful.
I have some possible options. One option is that the critic should resign his post as critic within the Canadian Alliance or the leader should remove him because they obviously are divergent in their views on this matter.
Another option is for the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition to apologize, not to me or Canadians but to the member for Dauphin—Swan River.