Mr. Speaker, I find somewhat disingenuous the talk about how the member used the word “misspeak”, because on several occasions when opposition members of the House have had to rise to apologize, the Conservatives have never, ever let the issue go. It was never pointe finale for them. They would never say they would never bring it up again, that he or she had already apologized and therefore let us all drop it.
Let me go back to the context that the member for Outremont just talked about. Look at the context in this situation with the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. If he had witnessed the incident or someone had told him that it had taken place, I could understand some two weeks then going by and his coming back to the House to say he had misspoken because he had just found out that his information had been wrong. Perhaps he read somewhere in a document what had happened. He reported it to the House, but then came back and said he had misspoken. That happens: the evidence proves the contrary.
The context is that he saw it himself. He said on several occasions that “I saw this happen”. It took him two weeks to realize that his memory was not what it used to be.
It is a little disingenuous to say that he misspoke and that all things are innocent in this realm. They are not as innocent as they seem. Remember, it was Elections Canada that received the complaints that brought him to his feet in the House. Something happened at Elections Canada, not within his own conscience. It was about what he saw.