Mr. Speaker, I rise to respond to a point of order raised by the member for Don Valley West, who is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with regard to a question placed by the member for Cloverdale—Langley City in the debate on Friday on Bill C-6, conversion therapy.
This is not the first time I have had to respond to these kinds of statements in the House of Commons, unfortunately. What the member for Cloverdale—Langley City did was to hide behind biblical quotations to cast dispersions on gay members of the House of Commons. This is a very serious matter for me. I believe it is, in fact, a question of privilege. It makes it difficult for members of Parliament to do their jobs when they are subject to these kinds of accusations. It also makes it very difficult to encourage other Canadians to run for public office when these kinds of slurs are allowed in the House of Commons.
As I said, this is not the first time I have had to deal with this, unfortunately. On September 29, 2011, the previous member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, Russ Hiebert, made a statement in S.O. 31s where he implied that because of my position on certain legislation, I was a friend of pedophiles. At that time, I stood in the House and objected to that statement, first, because as an adult survivor of child abuse, I took very strong offence to that kind of statement; and second, because once again it made it difficult for me to do my job as an MP when subjected to those kinds of accusations. The same excuse was used by the previous member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale in 2011, which is being used again, “Oh, I didn't really mean that. Someone has misunderstood because I didn't say word for word what I clearly implied in my statement.”
This does affect me as a serving member of the House. This affects all members of my community across the country when these statements are allowed to stand without apology or removal. I would ask the Speaker take this into very serious consideration and take appropriate action to ensure that this does not happen again in the House of Commons. That can only happen when a member is sanctioned for doing so.