Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to our friend from Winnipeg North. He speaks a lot in the House.
On some occasions what we are talking about affects us here in Parliament, as this does, because the law that we are referring to today and the motion of privilege that the Speaker ruled on affects all of us in our conduct and behaviour. It should be established how high the bar is set in the Canada Elections Act on order to be convicted of the crime that the member for Peterborough has been convicted of. I do not think that was in the member's comments. This is a very difficult thing, and it has been since 2008.
My question for our friend from the Liberal Party is around the culture that seems to have been permeating some parts of the Conservative Party. With Mr. Penashue, who was accused of similar things, we saw that the recourse was taken differently.
Is there not some conversation among Canadians in which they worry about the degrading quality and content of what goes on in our elections when they see criminal charges like this successfully brought to a sitting member of Parliament? Is this not something, regardless of our political affiliations, that we should all be seized with? The deterioration of voters' confidence in those they elect to sit in office degrades this very place itself and the integrity of our democratic institutions.