Mr. Speaker, I do not rise with a light heart to participate in this debate.
The member for Mississauga—Streetsville is a member of the committee on which I sit. I do want to make sure that I am as fair as I can possibly be.
I think it is important that we know a couple of things about the chronology, and that will help explain why the Speaker felt it was important that we actually have this matter go to committee.
The first thing is that the misleading statement was made twice on the same day, in more detail the first time and in general terms the second time.
The second thing is the retraction. I am not going to call it an apology because that is not the way it was phrased. It was a statement that what he had said before was not accurate. That is the way it was framed. It was 19 days later, on February 25.
We have 19 days and something that was said twice. It really does lead us into the territory of needing to know more from our hon. friend from Mississauga—Streetsville, which is why I think it is entirely appropriate that the Speaker believes this should be remitted to committee.
We do need to know because, to be fair to us, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville did not offer any serious explanation as to how it is that he could have made that kind of mistake. It clearly was misleading the House, so the impact is there. However, I think we have a right to know what was behind that, by way of a fuller explanation before the committee.
This is why I do take a different tack from my hon. colleagues across the way when they ask why we do not let water flow under the bridge and not pursue it any further. This is very important.
I do want to say that I was personally misled. I was not actually there for that part of what was said, but it got to me quite early on. I spent a little bit of time sending out emails, asking researchers to start looking for the real world evidence that what had been described in the House could have happened, asking if there had been reports to Elections Canada of this kind of behaviour, or if there was any social science evidence that what my colleague had said was true.
I believed him, in the sense that that was my presumption. It was only that evening when somebody, who was maybe paying more attention than I to exactly what had been said, wrote something as a journalist that let me know there was something wrong. Whatever the motivation was, this could not be right. That is simply because what was said did not make sense.
I am referring to an article by Justin Ling that was written the night of the two statements by my hon. colleague from Mississauga—Streetsville. It is called “Building Poilievre's Electoral Fraud in the Sky”. It is not about—