Mr. Speaker, I was not sure whether I wanted to rise in this debate, but having listened to the Conservative House leader, I feel I have to. With respect, if he checks the blues he will find that all the leader of the NDP was able to say before the noise that we are objecting to happened was “yesterday Colin Powell told me”. That was it.
Now, I ask if that is inflammatory; maybe if he had gotten as far as “yesterday Colin Powell told me that he favoured the NDP” or “yesterday Colin Powell told me that the moon is made of green cheese” or whatever, but all he got to say was “yesterday Colin Powell told me”. There is nothing inflammatory about that. The fact of the matter is that the House erupted, not just once but twice, after the leader of the NDP got those four or five words out.
Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that you have a problem here, and actually, we all have a problem. I know, Mr. Speaker, that you try to deal with things by being humourous, but this is getting to be unfunny.
It is getting to be unfunny, this systematic harassment in particular. A lot of stuff goes on here, but there is a systematic harassment and barracking and yelling at the leader of the NDP when he rises in the House to speak. I find it particularly objectionable.
It is funny, Mr. Speaker, in that we have spent two weeks with everyone walking on eggshells worrying about whether somebody would say something or say anything, or whisper, or even moan improperly, if the President of the United States was in the House of Commons here talking to us, but we can treat each other in the way that we treat each other. We are total hypocrites when it comes this, to the extent that we all so are worried about how polite we are going to be, but why can we not be polite with each other?
Why is it a problem if anybody were to express a disagreeable opinion with respect to someone else, but other members of the House feel that it is perfectly okay to shout down a person to the point where we cannot hear what is going on and the person cannot put his or her question? The duly elected member of Parliament who is the duly elected leader of a political party that over two million Canadians voted for and that person cannot ask a question in the House without being shouted down? That is not the Parliament I thought I was being elected to.