Mr. Speaker, in the answer by the parliamentary secretary he appears to have avoided the question before us, the issue of privilege, and spoke instead about vouching. I would like to speak to that and ask his views on it, and then ask his views on the merit of the substance of what we are here to talk about.
Apparently some 800,000 Canadians use voter cards and vouching, particularly 70,000 aboriginal people, because the kinds of identification he listed are often not available to some of the poorest of our fellow citizens and seniors, who do not have them at hand and the like.
That strikes me as a very weak defence, but that is not what we are here to talk about. I simply want to respond and ask him this, the question I asked of my hon. friend from Welland: if a member stands before us and apparently is making a point based on evidence, a factual assertion that he saw a particular form of voter fraud, which he then later retracts and says in fact did not happen, that it was simply an anecdote or a made-up story, to use words that I think I am allowed to use, does that not have an impact on the fundamental nature of parliamentary debate?