Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that my friend across the way finds that discussing a member being potentially held in contempt is shameful, but the act of misleading the House about our elections law is fine. That does not seem to be a problem.
The Speaker's ruling said:
...the fact remains that the House continues to be seized of completely contradictory statements. This is a difficult position in which to leave members, who must be able to depend on the integrity of the information with which they are provided to perform their parliamentary duties.
Let us be clear as to what actually happened. By the way, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville has completely avoided the opportunity that has been afforded to him over these many hours, as the Conservatives claim, to come into the House and tell us what happened. We still do not know. We believe we should find out because there may be motivations; there may be something interesting. He said he witnessed electoral fraud, then he said he did not witness electoral fraud. He saw a crime, and then he did not see a crime. He had two weeks to decide whether he saw it and what the truth was.
Here is the point. There are three conditions that had to be met in order for us to even be having this debate. It had to be proven that the statement was misleading. He did that. It must be established that the member making the statement knew at the time that it was not correct. That was also true. Finally, in making the statement, it must be established that the member intended to mislead the House. That is also by the Speaker's reference, not by my opinion. I hope my friend would at least take the advice of the Speaker. All of those merits were met.
The hon. member condones that activity, and in fact applauds the member, for once having been caught misleading the House, he had to come back and apologize for it. I do not understand how he balances these things.
He will vote later tonight against understanding what actually happened because the member for Mississauga—Streetsville will not come into this place to defend himself.