Order. The Chair indicated it would take the matter under advisement and get back to the House if necessary. I did not get back to the House because I did not regard it as necessary and I will give reasons now that the matter has been raised again.
Beauchesne's was cited by the hon. member for St. John's West in raising the matter yesterday. He referred to one of the citations and I will refer him and the right hon. member for Calgary Centre to citation 492, which states, “The following expressions are a partial listing of expressions which have caused intervention on the part of the Chair as listed in the Index of the Debates between 1976 and 1987”, and “fabrication” is one of them. It caused interventions, but it was not ruled out of order. The word also occurs in another list, where it has been ruled unparliamentary; at least fraud was, and fabrication was at citation 489 of Beauchesne's, which I believe is the one referred to the other day by the hon. member for St. John's West.
But I note that because of the inconsistency in the use of these expressions, at least in terms of the Chair's dealing with them, I did not think it necessary to intervene. I note that under citation 488 there is a list of expressions which have been ruled unparliamentary consistently by the Chair, and I note none of them were used, for example, “a bag of wind” or “inspired by forty-rod whiskey”. I am sure that no hon. member of the House would suggest that anyone, on either side of the House, was inspired by forty-rod whiskey, which would be unparliamentary and quite improper.
I rely on the various citations in Beauchesne's in reaching a conclusion that while the hon. member may take some offence at the language, and we all do sometimes at things that are said in the House, there is not clear authority for the Chair to say that this word or that word is unparliamentary based on the precedents that were cited to me and that are in Beauchesne's.
Accordingly, I am not inclined at this stage to rule the expression unparliamentary and demand that there be a withdrawal. I as much as indicated that yesterday, but I did indicate that I would review the situation. I did indeed review it and came to the conclusion it would not be necessary to get back to the House as I indicated. Now I have come back and have given my reasons and I hope the right hon. member is satisfied.