Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable for his speech. I support part (a) of his motion, with which I fully agree. Unfortunately, when we get to part (b) things start to sour. I would like to draw attention to some of the terms used in the wording of the motion, which make it totally impossible for me to understand the purpose and to support it. It states:
express its belief that...partisan political actors.
They would have us believe that being politically engaged is wrong. In my 25 years of teaching, I used every platform I had to tell the young people I talked to about the need for political engagement. Of course, political engagement means taking a stand on an ideology. “Enlightenment comes when ideas collide”, as the saying goes. If we have all political stripes in committee then we can settle on a course of action. To me that is definition of engaging in politics. Worse yet, the motion says:
it is inappropriate...to pick winners and losers in the media in an election year;
Does that mean that if this were not an election year, then it would be appropriate to get the friends of the party, either Conservative or Liberal, to pick and choose?