Mr. Speaker, I rise in response to the point of privilege made by the member for Acadie--Bathurst on November 19.
I will not debate the policy matter involved but, by way of summarizing my past comments in the House, I will respond to the content of his remarks.
Yesterday the member in question made a factually incorrect and misleading statement about my tireless effort in the House to champion the cause of equality of opportunity and merit based hiring. It was an attempt to intimidate those who justly oppose the discriminatory impact of forced bilingualism on unilingual Canadians and the discriminatory effect of race based hiring.
Clearly the member for Acadie--Bathurst is evading the fact that we cannot discriminate in favour of someone on the basis of race or language without unfairly discriminating against someone else because of their race or language. He should withdraw his question of privilege and apologize to me and to all Canadians for his attack on and specious attempt to silence defenders of equality.
For the record, I stand solidly behind my legitimate criticism of the government's race based hiring scheme and discriminatory language laws. The truth of the matter is that those who support state sanctioned racism by hiding behind politically correct rhetoric instead of a white sheet can indeed be deservedly characterized as modern day Klansmen.