I appreciate the reminder, Mr. Speaker. That is actually an important point among the points that I am making this afternoon.
As I was saying, some of the biggest risks that we are facing as a country are extremist movements, extremist ideologies and the politics of division, anger, resentment and hatred being directly imported from the United States. That is not on one side of the spectrum; that is on the extremes of both sides. It is damaging to our democracy and it is undermining the public's confidence in our democratic institutions, which brings me to the issue of parliamentary privilege.
In the House, MPs cannot be sued or prosecuted for things that they say in the chamber, in committee or in official parliamentary proceedings. In itself, this is not a standing order. This is an inherent feature of the Westminster system of government, but, interestingly, it does not exist at the municipal level. I am obviously rather new to this role, but I did spend seven years as a municipal councillor in Hamilton, Canada's 10th-largest city, with 650,000 people and a $2-billion annual budget. I was the chair of the planning committee, the budget and the public works. I served as deputy mayor. In that span, I probably chaired hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings. Local politics in Hamilton are fairly ruthless, cutthroat—