Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak tothis matter as well. Unlike the House leader of the Conservative Party, I am not so much bothered and distressed by the fact that one of our colleagues is given an ovation, genuine or not, as by the fact that this colleague is deprived of the possibility of finishing the preamble to his question.
Mr. Speaker, if this is the practice you wish to implement and it means that a member who is heckled is prevented from proceeding with his preamble, this is extremely disconcerting. Some people here might develop the unhealthy habit of heckling every time someone's preamble was not to their liking. This would eventually lead to no one ever having a chance to say anything in a preamble that was the least bit controversial. In this case, everyone will agree that there was nothing the least controversial in the preamble of the leader of the NDP. He did not even have the chance to get to the end of his speech, which might have been where the controversy lay.
We must not let a trend develop here whereby colleagues would end up deprived of the opportunity of completing their argument simply because of a heckling or an ovation, whether well intentioned or otherwise. You would need to implement a kind of rule of reprisal, if I might term it that, for members who waste the time of the House.
In the case of interest here, it is my opinion that the leader of the New Democratic Party was not the one wasting the time of the House, yet he is the one who has had to bear the consequences.