Mr. Speaker, I agree. When we are making legislation like this we are telling Canadians we are accepting a leadership role in trying to change how society views some of these issues. In this case it is harassment and bullying.
The leadership starts with the Prime Minister of Canada. He had a very unique opportunity this summer when these allegations came forward. I want to reiterate the Prime Minister did not deny this happened. He just said they viewed this occurrence differently. He had an opportunity to take a very strong leadership role and send a strong message to Canadians that no one is exempt from these types of charges. We were all in high school, or university, or college. We probably have all had our moments we were less than proud of, but the Prime Minister could have taken that chance to simply apologize, tell the young women he was out of line and that it is not something he has done in his adult years. However, he did not do that. Instead, he deflected and probably made this victim feel even worse than she felt 17 or 18 years ago when she made this allegation in a newspaper report and talked about how horrible she felt that the future prime minister treated her, and acted, this way. Not only did he not apologize, but he said if he had known she was a reporter for a national newspaper, he would have treated her differently. Again, it puts her on a different level. It belittled her that she was not important enough for him to even notice. That sends a very poor message.