Thank you for the clarification, Mr. Speaker. In that case, I will present my subsequent response in the next speaking spot, I will just terminate first, with an assertion and then a question.
I am disturbed by the suggestion that there was any accusation found in the document that any member is anti-Semitic. This is clearly outrageous. The fact that the previous government decided to participate at Durban, knowing full well the atmosphere of anti-Semitism that surrounded it, and the member knows very well because he was there, is a statement of fact. It is equally a statement of fact that this government was the first in the world to decide to withdraw from Durban II because of those concerns. Now that in my judgment is a legitimate policy difference and that is what public debate involves.
However, my question for the member is this. In the year 2000, former minister of immigration, my predecessor in the Liberal government, said that my party was filled with “racists, bigots, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers”. Now this was not an argument over who attended a conference or the nature of a conference. This was not a conventional political debate about facts. This was truly the most vile kind of defamatory slur against tens of thousands of members of my party, myself included, and the millions of Canadians who voted for it, who she accused of being filled with “racists, bigots, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers”. I do not recall a single member of the Liberal Party standing and condemning those remarks or even offering any kind of apology for those remarks. That member was promoted in a subsequent cabinet.
Perhaps the member makes a lot of comments that are not on the public record and perhaps he made some private condemnation of those remarks, but I would challenge him. If he really wants to get into these issues, and I hope he is aware of the consequences of this, would he stand in this place and point out where any member of his party condemned the outrageous, defamatory slurs of Elinor Caplan, a former Liberal MP?