Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for giving me the time to speak to this point of privilege.
One good thing about this is that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville did stand up in the House and say that he did not tell the truth.
Whatever you do, Mr. Speaker, I hope you make sure you do not create a moral hazard. I hope you encourage people to correct the record when they do not tell the truth in the House. That would be a good thing.
I remember in the last session of this Parliament when I spoke on a related point, some research results were corrected but the ministers did not make it clear that the results had been corrected and kept using the old results. There was no way to go back and correct Hansard. There was no way to make it clear that something that had been said in the House was not true. I hope that whatever remedy is found for this would allow for Hansard to be corrected so that we would not have to check Hansard all the time to make sure that every single statement in it is actually true.
When the member stood up and said his statement was not true, he did not acknowledge that he has hurt the reputation of the House, and that is something that we need to be able to do our work. It is something that Canada needs in order to attract good Canadians to serve in the House. We have to be able to honestly call each other “honourable”, and I do not know if we can do that. It is embarrassing when I talk to friends and they ask me what I am doing this for, what am I doing with these politicians. There is a bit of cynicism out there. Being able to honestly call each other “honourable members” is important to the country and to the functioning of the House, and it gives Canadians confidence in what we do. That is important for good government.
I would call on you, Mr. Speaker, to take these things into account. I do not know how you will rule on this point of privilege, but there is an important idea here, which is that we have to rely on what each of us says in the House. We need to have confidence that we are trying our best to tell each other the truth, to tell each other the facts and the evidence. We should not make up stuff to sound good and to make a good video to send out to our voters.