Debates of Nov. 26th, 2009

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Leave the party and you won't be associated with that any more.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I would like to be able to conclude without being—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I ask all members to exercise some moderation and those who cannot wait until questions and comments to please leave the House. Otherwise, the member for Mount Royal has the floor for now.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker. I will continue with what was written by my wife in the op ed:

But the facts are: [the member for Mount Royal], along with representatives of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith, remained at Durban 1 at the request of the Israeli and other governments to combat a poisoned atmosphere that descended into vitriol and hate.

Taking this matter out of context, as the hon. member did, let me repeat so that there will be no ambiguity and so that he does not misrepresent this again. All governments went to Durban because it was the first anti-racism conference of the 21st century, and we went there with the hope and with the view of condemning racism.

However, that conference turned into a conference of racism against Israel and the Jews. That is when we stood up, that was when we were asked to remain, and that is what we did. We were praised for having been the party that most condemned anti-Semitism at that Durban 1 conference.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would only ask the member to tell this place whether he agreed with the position of the government at the time.

The member, quite frankly, is introducing irrelevant issues. He is contending that the Government of Israel asked the Canadian government to stay. I have information to the contrary.

If I am not mistaken, the member opposite left Durban in disgust before its end and could not persuade the Government of Canada to do the same. I understand his frustration but what he is talking about are issues of normal public debate.

I will quote again the Victoria Times Colonist which said that the presence of the previous government, right to the bitter end, helped “to legitimize what has become a propaganda forum for some of the worst anti-Jewish hatemongering since the Second World War”.

That is a legitimate point of view. It is my point of view and it is the point of millions of Canadians. It is the point of view of many of his constituents. He is just uncomfortable with that fact and I understand his discomfort.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the word “uncomfortable” came up at least seven times in the minister's speech.

I could ask him if he is uncomfortable with the fact that his own Prime Minister called my people, the people of Atlantic Canada, “people with a culture of defeat”.

I could ask him if he is uncomfortable with the comments made by the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's regarding the people on the streets of Halifax.

I could ask him if he is uncomfortable with the slurs against gays that a member from Saskatchewan posited on the public recently. I would love to know what his sincere response to that was.

If the member is such a defender of what is said by members of his own party that are wrong, where was he when those things were said?

One of the questions that arises f from the ruling on the prima facie case of privilege is the means by which a population in Canada was targeted. The member for Mount Royal made a very good point in making that a very big part of his point of privilege.

I know the minister will not answer the first questions, but how did his party target the people of Mount Royal? Is his party willing to table the documents that prove the modus operandi of the service on the Jewish population of Mount Royal with its ten percenter in the efforts of having a full discussion of what ten percenters, and it is quite apparent, are doing to decimate the public process here?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First, Madam Speaker, I am not a specialist in the distribution of ten percenters, but that is not the issue.

Second, I think these are issues of interest to all Canadians, not just to Jewish Canadians. They are certainly of interest to me. I have spent much of my parliamentary career as a non-Jew working on these issues.

Third, I presume the answer to his question is that the means used to select constituencies and areas for distribution of this ten percenter were precisely the same as the ten percenter with the Israeli flag on it distributed by Liberal members of Parliament on the same issues. Sometimes the fog of hypocrisy is so thick in here that people cannot even hear.

The ten percenter in question was distributed after a ten percenter on issues of concern to the Jewish community by members of the official opposition. If the member would like an investigation into how that was distributed, I suggest he speak to the people in the Liberal research bureau.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, because the hon. minister raised the matter of a ten percenter in the riding of Eglinton—Lawrence, I thought it would be worthwhile to make the distinction that the particular ten percenter was a ten percenter from the member himself to his constituents. It was not a regrouped or a party type ten percenter. I am looking at it right here.

I wanted to put that on the record. Maybe the minister does not think that is a difference. However, in this case we are dealing with a party-generated, regrouped, multi-distributed, printed, duplicated and distributed ten percenter as opposed to a communication by a member of Parliament to his or her own constituents.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am aware that the ten percenter in question, issued by the Liberal caucus group, was issued in the riding of Thornhill and other constituencies in that part of the greater Toronto area.

I am simply saying that this is really quite ridiculous. Members opposite are trying to make a capital case out of a conventional political communication using the same tactics and distribution that they use all the time, even on the same set of issues where basically incontrovertible facts are presented that are matters of conventional political debate.

If members of the Liberal Party are not comfortable with the fact that their leader accused Israel of war crimes, that members of their caucus called for the delisting of Hezbollah, that they called for an increase in funding for the Hamas-led PA when we eliminated that funding, that they decided to stay at Durban I until the bitter end after the withdrawal of other countries and, in so doing, “legitimizing the process”, in the words of the Victoria Times Colonist, I say too bad.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I feel quite engaged in this issue. I want to suggest that the issue is partly that of libel or near libel and partly that of the use of the ten percenter.

If this particular issue had happened out on the street, disconnected from Parliament, it might or might not have given rise to a liable or slander action. However, because it involves material printed by the House of Commons and distributed through the post office through House of Commons means, it becomes a parliamentary matter.

The issue has actually been lurking. Perhaps I am one of those who actually considers it a kind of ugly administrative issue for Parliament, not a happy issue. That part of it is the way the parties have now taken the privilege of individual members to communicate with constituents and turned it into a massive political communications mechanism involving the use of tonnes of paper and millions of dollars.

I remember when I first came to this place that there was a rule that did not allow us at the time to use our party symbols when using House of Commons facilities to communicate with our constituents. I do not think we were even allowed to use the name of our party. I recall getting kickback one or two times on things that I wrote to my constituents where I used the word “Liberal”. It came back crossed out saying that I could not use it.

I actually thought it was a pretty good rule and I did not try to abuse it, but over time I think the House of Commons staff had difficulty enforcing the rules and eventually gave up. The case was made that the House of Commons should not be a censor of what MPs were sending to their constituents. Party affiliation came to be accepted in communications between the members of Parliament and their constituents.

The second big part of this question of privilege that we are now debating is the way in which the use of ten percenters has evolved from being a communication between an MP and his or her constituents, and it has gone way beyond that now. In a sense, the parties in the House and, in this case conspicuously by the governing party, have essentially co-opted that and turned it into a kind of ugly vehicle of a liable or near liable.

I want to address that piece first. I suppose I should be fair and say that I have not really concluded that this is fully a “liable”. I realize I can say things in the House of Commons and not have to account for it out on the street so I use the term in quotes.

As I read this particular ten percenter that we are discussing, I could not help but think that I, as a member of the Liberal Party, was being labelled as an anti-Semite. The words are right there. It says, “On fighting anti-Semitism abroad, the Liberals willingly participated in overtly anti-Semitic Durban 1”.

I am a Liberal and this essentially says that, which is why I call it a liable or a near liable. To my knowledge, I have never done or said anything or even thought anything that was even close to being anti-Semitic. This particular ten percenter, clearly on the face of it was designed by professionals, just did not happen.

It was carefully designed to convey a message. I will go back to what I said. This ten percenter vehicle is no longer just a communication from an MP to constituents; it is actually used by parties and it involves design and costs of design, careful design involving all kinds of resources, millions of dollars, all because it is political. It has become a political vehicle. It is no longer an information vehicle. It is political.

On this document there is a picture of the Prime Minister. It is kind of sad, really, that a document that suggests that I and my party are anti-Semitic stands over a picture of the Prime Minister wearing a big smile. Let us just say I am not happy with that. There is no member of the House who could be happy with that.

It has gone through the Conservative operators behind the scenes. It should be noted that probably no member of the House here has participated in the design of this or other ten percenters. The same is probably true of the ten percenters that come out from all the other parties. At this point in time, all the political parties mail out these ten percenters.

In the case of this particular ten percenter, I do not know who takes authorship. I do not think that has been determined. The member who moved the motion does not know who actually designed or wrote this. It appears as though the minister who just spoke is taking some ownership of it. He says it is just facts.

It is not facts; it is political propaganda. It purports to rewrite our history. It purports to rewrite Canada's role at Durban I. With 20/20 hindsight we can all see how ugly Durban I was, but we did not know how ugly it was until it was over. Before it started, all the major countries of the world were participating.

As the thing went on, a whole level of discomfort developed as a number of representatives from different countries began to express their anti-Israel views. I say anti-Israel; I do not want to get into anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, but it was clearly anti-Israel. That became a huge problem for Durban I, and it was a huge problem for Durban II. It was a huge problem for everybody.

I think it is simply wrong and it attempts to rewrite history, and maligns everybody who was at Durban I on day one, that somehow they were all willingly participating in an anti-Semitic exercise. I was not there, but my government was. This essentially maligns all Canadians. It says that our government, that Canadians were participating in an overtly anti-Semitic Durban I.

I do not think the minister realizes the significance of that type of an allegation, designed not by him but by those cutesy writers in the back rooms of the Conservative Party, writing cute stuff that they can send out, politically, to Canadians at no cost.

There are three parts to this, and the minister can say, “Oh, they are just little facts.” Everyone in this place knows people can take a fact in isolation and twist it to make it look different. The overall impact of this ten percenter was exactly what has been described by my colleague from Mount Royal and exactly as the Speaker has accepted the initial application from the floor here.

The impact is still the same. This is not just a collection of random facts. It is not just a little letter from an MP to his or her constituents. This is a political diatribe, one that is wrong, misleading and, as I say, close to libellous. It is a near libel.

I am saying that it libels me and my party. I am a member of the party. If it just said that we turned right instead of saying that we turned left, then maybe we could say “well, okay”, but the subject matter is anti-Semitism.

If we go back 2,000 years in the history of the human race, we could probably make a list of some very ugly examples of man's inhumanity to man. We would find on that list anti-Semitism. Everybody knows that. It is still a problem in our societies.

Wherever it shows its ugly head, we condemn it. It should not have a chance of existence in our country or any country. Yet this ten percenter alleges it. It is what is alleged that is just as important as the vehicle that was used to allege it. I hope that when the committee looks at this, it will look both at the issue of how it was inserted in the design of this ten percenter and at the ten percenter itself.

I want to say here today that the evolution in the use of ten percenters generally is bringing the House into disrepute. It brings members into disrepute. Members are relied upon by their party whips to allow them to use the ten percenter privilege to combine all of the mailing rights and mail this stuff out by the thousands or millions at essentially no cost to the party. In a sense, members' privileges are being co-opted by the parties.

For the record, as I understand it, the cost of this is all borne by the taxpayer. Because it is not a normal type of MP communication, I believe, the breakdown is that the parties themselves pay for the postage but they pay for it by the pound. It is weighed.

An employee of the post office actually works in the House of Commons precinct now, and I know this because I spoke with him. His job is to weigh them. Stamps are not put on them. They are not counted. They are mailed by, I guess, the kilogram. They are mailed by weight. They are very voluminous and the party whips pay by the kilogram to send the stuff through the post office.

Who pays for the printing? That is paid for by the House of Commons. I understand that this fiscal year the House is short of money. Why is that? It is because the parties in the House have gobbled up the tens of millions of dollars already allocated for this and this expense has gone over budget. My goodness, what a terrible thing if our parties were not able to send out these pieces of junk mail.

If it were just junk mail, the taxpayers would be irritated, but when it contains a libel, they should be angry. When it contains a libel related to one of the more ugly continuing scourges on the list of man's inhumanity to man, which is anti-Semitism, they ought to be doubly angry. The House should be angry.

We have to make changes and put an end to it. The way to put an end to it is simply to remove the regrouping. I do not want to impair any particular member's right to communicate with his or her constituents. We might even allow a mailing or two beyond the constituencies. In some urban areas the ridings are close together and who knows where the political boundaries are, so a member might want to mail something to all of the east side of Ottawa.

However, the point is the committee in looking at this should be cognizant of the fact that the ten percenter privilege that we all have has now been taken over by our parties and there is a whole team of professionals writing and zinging this stuff around the country by the kilogram and our constituents are receiving it and thinking, boy, who is paying for all this junk mail, who is paying for all this junk? The answer is the constituents are paying. The taxpayer is paying.

I am going to wrap up. I have made my views known, but I could not be stronger in my view that this particular ten percenter went way over the line and was libellous in a manner that brings the House into disrepute and the system of ten percenters into disrepute, and I think it has to be fixed.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Madam Speaker, I understand that this is a difficult issue for a lot of members. When issues like the Middle East are debated in the House of Commons, issues on which the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party take opposite positions, the debate can sometimes become heated. My goal is to unpackage some of that disagreement in the hope that we might find common ground.

The distinction is that this current Conservative Prime Minister led the entire world in walking out on the Durban II hate festival because we knew it was an anti-Semitic and racist event. Because of the leadership of this Conservative Prime Minister, the rest of the world followed Canada in acknowledging that. Country after country followed our Canada and this Prime Minister in making that decision.

By contrast, the Liberal government decided to stay at the Durban I conference even when the hideous facts of that conference became apparent. Now the member for Mount Royal has said that the Liberal government members could not have left because they did not know what was going on and they had to stay until the end to find out. However, that did not stop Israel and the United States from doing the courageous thing, which was to walk out.

Now I understand it was easier for the Liberals to stay at Durban I, but sometimes courage is difficult, and I would like to commend the United States and Israel which made the right decision to walk out at that conference. At the time the Conservative predecessor parties called on the Liberals to leave, but they refused. In the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, our government stood with Israel against terrorism. The Liberal leader said Israel had committed war crimes. That is on the record and the member for Mount Royal cannot change the facts, nor can he silence those who are making those facts known.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would just invite the member to not change the channel. The issue is what was in the ten percenter, and what was in the ten percenter was Durban I. It says that “Liberals...Willingly participated in overtly anti-Semitic Durban I”. To be honest with him, in my view it would have been a lot easier to walk out of Durban I. It would have been a lot easier to walk out with some of our allies, the few that did walk out, but some of our allies prevailed upon us to stay so there would be someone at the conference with a hand on the tiller, somebody still there and able to participate.

I invite the member not to change the channel but to deal with the issues involved in the ten percenter itself.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not intend to give a speech, and I wish other people would follow that policy, but I do have a question. It seems to me, and I hope the committee, when it reviews this, will look at things from this perspective, that with regard to the whole issue of ten percenters, there is the issue of circulation and whether we should continue to allow the regrouping and the widespread circulation. That is one issue. Perhaps we should either limit that or prohibit it.

The other issue with the ten percenters is content, and that is more pertinent to the ten percenter that was sent out in this case, not only to the riding of the member for Mount Royal but to a number of other ones as well. I wonder if my colleague could comment on whether he agrees that this is where the debate should be going, since both those issues should be addressed, and provide any comments he might have on restricting the material that could be contained in ten percenters, not only across the whole country but in individual ridings.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not have too many solutions. The member quite fairly raises issues involving the rights of members to communicate with their constituents. I think we ought to max that. I think we ought to repress or contain the ability of parties to use those privileges.

I fully agree with him that the big issue here is the content of the ten percenter. That is what has brought this issue to the floor here. Should the House vote in favour of the motion, I think the committee should deal with the structural issue of the regrouped ten percenters.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, the issue is not the positions taken on matters relating to Israel and the Jewish community. I do not mind if the Conservative Party sets forth the positive positions that it has taken with respect to Israel and the Middle East. I do not mind if it wants to take credit for walking out of Durban II. I might add parenthetically that our party supported that action, and supported that publicly.

That is not the point. The point is that rather than make truthful statements about one's own party record, one is making malicious, false and slanderous statements about another party's record and the members of that party. It is not only that. What it really gets down to is the issue of the use and abuse of ten percenters, using public funds and targeting a Jewish community to make these false and misleading and slanderous statements.

That is what the issue is and that is why the Speaker found a prima facie breach of privilege, because the ten percenter also tended to prejudice the work of the member in his riding and thereby diminished his reputation and standing. Those are the Speaker's criteria. That is what we should be debating as applied to the facts, and not positions on the Middle East, which changes channel and misleads the public once again. They should apologize for their statements rather than continue to mislead the House.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, there are not very many occasions when I can improve on the remarks by the member for Mount Royal, given his other job and the fact he is recognized around the world as a leader in human rights and a lawyer, and a teacher to boot.

I really cannot improve on those. Perhaps my own remarks may have gone a bit further afield in looking at the whole ten percenter issue and the broader distribution issue, but I think the member for Mount Royal has brought appropriate focus to this.

As some point, depending on how the House votes and the committee deals with this, there may be room for an apology. However, I would hope that the process would allow the House to come together a little bit on the problem, because it is not going to get any better as time goes on. It just seems to be heating up over the months and we have a problem that we all have to deal with here.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Madam Speaker, I am having a little trouble with the level of hypocrisy in this debate. I have a ten percenter that came to my riding from the member for Pickering—Scarborough East under the title “A Track Record of Hypocrisy”.

The hon. member used the word political “machine” when referring to us. He talked about cute graphics, or something like that.

On the ten percenter that came to my riding from a Liberal member, there is a nice big Liberal logo at the bottom, and in place of the postage stamp, a picture of Lester Pearson.

The last time I recall, the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East is not the hon. member in my riding: I am. I do not know how he distributed these, but unless he came to my riding and distributed them door to door, I believe he probably used the mail system to send them out.

Coming back to the topic at hand, I have a couple of questions regarding this ten percenter. A couple of members have talked as though they were specifically named in the document—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I apologize for interrupting, but I would like to give the hon. member time to respond and there is less than a minute left.

The hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I concede, as will all members, that all four parties recognize parties in the House and send out ten percenters. Most of these are designed by the parties, by professionals, and are filled with facts, and also with political invective and party logos. I receive them at my apartment in Ottawa from, let us just say, different parties. All the parties do it, and this is an issue for us.

However, in this particular debate today, as my colleague from Mount Royal points out, the issue is the content of this one ten percenter that directly, or indirectly by innuendo, alleges that my party has participated in an anti-Semitic exercise. That is grossly unfair. There is no ability for a member to rebut these types of allegations.

I do not like this scenario at all. It must be fixed, and I am quite sure that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs will look at that as it reviews this.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Madam Speaker, the member across the way for Scarborough—Rouge River has said this is a discussion about the contents of the particular ten percenter in question. Of course, the ten percenter in question refers to policy differences on the Middle East. As has been pointed out in the past, there is a vast disagreement between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party on the question of the Middle East.

We mentioned earlier the issue of the Durban II conference. The Prime Minister, under this Conservative government, made the principled decision to pull Canada out of the Durban process before it even began, because it became clear to this government that it was going to be a forum for hatred and meanness. The rest of the world followed this Conservative Prime Minister in making that decision.

That was a very sharp distinction from the way the previous Liberal government behaved at the similarly odious Durban I conference, and I will quote what the Victoria Times Colonist said at that time:

The continued presence at the conference of Canada's secretary of state for multiculturalism no longer serves any useful purpose and, in fact, helps to legitimize what has become a propaganda forum for some of the worst anti-Jewish hatemongering since the Second World War.

That was on September 5, 2001.

It was clear at that time that this conference was not worthy of Canada's participation, but the previous Liberal government did the easy thing and stayed at the conference and lent Canada's legitimacy to it. Our party disagreed with that decision, and Israel and the United States of America took the courageous position of pulling out entirely.

The member for Mount Royal has made a very curious claim that Israel wanted Canada to stay at the Durban I conference. I have seen not one shred of evidence that is the case. In fact, it would seem to be explicitly contradicted by the fact that Israel itself pulled out of the conference, and so it would have no reason to advise others to stay behind.

I move on now to the subject of the conflict between Hezbollah terrorists and our democratic allies in Israel in the summer of 2006. During that conflict, this Conservative Prime Minister stood with our democratic allies in Israel and backed them up when it was very difficult to do so. By contrast, the current Liberal leader used the occasion to accuse Israel of war crimes. Members of the Liberal caucus marched in the streets with Hezbollah flags blowing in the wind behind them, and one Liberal MP even said it was a good time for Hezbollah to be legalized in this country.

That was the position of the Liberal Party. I respect the right of the Liberal Party to take that position. I disagree with it, but it is wrong for the member for Mount Royal to subsequently demand that others be silenced when they point out those facts.

On the subject of Hezbollah, I would like to take a moment to recognize the Minister of International Trade, the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla. He is here in the chamber and when he was in the House of Commons as a member of the opposition, he stood and relentlessly called upon the Liberal government to back down and ban Hezbollah as it was a terrorist organization.

There was tremendous Liberal resistance to his call.

The Liberal Party argued that Hezbollah was a social program and that it needed to remain legal, but because of the relentless efforts of the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, who is currently serving as the Conservative international trade minister, the Liberals were reversed and Hezbollah was banned.

As we continue to look at the record of the Conservative government, we will see that this government has led the way in the global effort to defeat terrorism. Our position has been dramatically different from that of the Liberal Party.

These are facts. They are irrefutable as facts. The member for Mount Royal might not like these facts, but he cannot change them and he cannot suppress others from making them known.

Therefore, I thank the House for the occasion to speak and I honour the great Canadian tradition of free speech where members of all parties can contribute their point of view.

I humbly suggest in conclusion, that as opposed to try to suppress the facts about his party, that the hon. Liberal member for Mount Royal might renounce the positions that his party has taken, and commit that he and his party will start anew on these issues.

In that spirit of renewal I think we could all come together.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Laval, Labour; the hon. member for Cape Breton--Canso, Royal Canadian Mint; the hon. member for Willowdale, Government Communications.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, I would like to enter into this debate. I think quite clearly the debate, as the hon. member for Mount Royal has said, is about the nature of ten percenters and the content within them.

In my riding I have had ten percenters from Conservative MPs in the last while as well that have accused me of voting in certain ways when I never had the opportunity to vote on those issues at all.

To my mind the pattern of this behaviour on the part of the Conservative Party and its members of Parliament is really fundamentally what is going on here.

This behaviour as we are starting to see is unacceptable and the information given through the auspices of the House of Commons must be accurate. That is the kind of ruling that I have heard today. That is the kind of ruling that the Speaker has made on other ten percenters.

I suppose we could continue to bring these up one by one as questions of privilege and occupy the time of the House in debate. However, that does not really have to take place if we can have the parties agree that these ten percenters must be used for legitimate purposes, for purposes that are not slanderous or that do not contain non-factual material.

Can my hon. colleague not see that there is an importance in coming out with a position from his party, as well as every other party, to ensure that this does not happen again?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Madam Chair, the ten percenter in question was strictly factual. That is the approach that this government takes.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Nepean—Carleton speaks about his party's position on the Middle East. He argues that it is more favourable than that of the Liberal Party. He is entitled to that view. That is not the issue before this House. That is not the ruling of the Speaker finding a prima facie breach of privilege.

The issue before this House, and the member for Nepean—Carleton never referenced it at all, is the use and abuse of ten percenters targeting identifiable religious minorities and using misleading, false, pernicious and slanderous content in that ten percenter, having the effect, as the Speaker found in his ruling, of damaging the reputation, the credibility and the standing of a member of this House.

That is what we are debating. That is what the Conservatives are ignoring. That is how they are changing the channel. They are in fact continuing to abuse this House, to abuse the processes of the breach of privilege debate in order to bring in misleading and irrelevant references to debates on the Middle East.

We are not debating the Middle East. I am prepared to do that any time outside this chamber.

We are talking about false, misleading, pernicious, slanderous ten percenters targeting a community and prejudicially affecting a party, the Liberal Party, and each and all of its members. That is what the issue is all about and that is where the issue of facts comes in.

False, pernicious, misleading, defamatory statements were made in that flyer. The Conservatives cannot escape it. It is there on its face. The Speaker made a ruling. I would like the hon. member for Nepean—Carleton to acknowledge that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I acknowledge that the hon. member says that his credibility has been damaged, and I respectfully remind him that that is not the result of a ten percenter but, rather, the result of the positions that his party has taken.