Madam Speaker, that is the most bizarre defence of something so simple I have ever heard. He has contradicted himself about 12 times on this. He is raising all these questions and is virtually answering them himself.
He talks about standing in here and publicly announcing how he is voting. He said that if he voted in a secret ballot, his constituents would not know how he voted. He just said that he voted for the candidate for Speaker and that guy won. He has just told the public exactly how he voted for the Speaker. That is great, his guy won. Is there anything shameful for him to say he voted for X for Speaker and he won? No, he could do exactly the same thing for the committee chair.
He also talked earlier about secret ballots and how to get elected on that day. That is just fine. In the good old days people were worried about reprisals from the state or the powers that be. That is exactly the answer as to why we should have secret ballot election, because they fear reprisal.
He just talked about the election of the caucus chair, saying that people would say they would support someone, probably like what people said to him during the election because they were trying to be polite to him, then they would have a secret ballot and do whatever they wanted. Then he said exactly the answer to this, that they feared reprisals from the state or “the powers that be”, which is lingo for the Prime Minister's Office.
He says that he will go ahead with this, when these people are feeling whipped and intimidated. It may not be the Prime Minister doing this because he will not waste his time on that. However he has put in place someone to do it. How does the member answer that?