Mr. Speaker, I can certainly focus on the criminal activities that have occurred in this House and what we should do.
I said that in a light of non-partisanship, we have to suspend the member, and I think that is a reasonable thing to do. In terms of Mr. Penashue, who was up under the same situation, he was forced to resign and had to leave in disgrace.
As I was saying earlier, why do we have to have really clear penalties for a breach of the Canada Elections Act and issues of electoral fraud? It is because if Canadians cannot trust that the system is actually there to ensure fairness for people running, then there can be no basis for electoral or democratic credibility at any level. When someone breaks the law and knowingly breaks the law and is defiant about breaking the law, it puts us in the House in a much more difficult position, because we are forced to act. This is what we are being forced to do tonight.
The member for Peterborough stood in this House, claimed his privileges were being abused because he was under investigation, went to court, and was found by Justice Cameron to have absolutely no credibility in his claim. To have then walked out of that courtroom and responded to a criminal conviction as somehow just the opinion of the judge has put us as legislators in a very difficult position, because he has no business being in this House if that is the attitude he takes. At no point did we ever see that he took seriously the breaking of the law, the falsifying of documents, and the continual refusal to respond to the investigators, and now he has been convicted. Yes, tonight we have to show that these issues have to be taken seriously. In the same way we have to take seriously the issue of Brazeau, Wallin, Duffy, Mac Harb, and Raymond Lavigne, we have to take this seriously.