Pat Martin

[Petitions, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present a petition once again from thousands and thousands of Canadians.

They make the point that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known, and yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. They point out that Canada actually spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and even blocks international efforts to curb its use.

Therefore, these many petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms, to institute a just transition program for asbestos workers and their communities, to end all government subsidies of asbestos both in Canada and abroad, and to stop blocking other countries that are trying to save their citizens from being exposed to asbestos, and to stop blocking international conventions, such as the Rotterdam Convention, designed to protect workers from exposure to Canadian asbestos.

[Employment Insurance Act, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I hardly know where to begin after listening to my colleague from the Liberal Party. I did have some prepared comments, but he has actually knocked me right off my game with the outlandish remarks he made regarding EI reform and his efforts to convince Canadians that the Liberal Party sincerely would like to see the EI system reformed.

I would like the record to show that it was the Liberals who gutted the unemployment insurance program in 1996. It was the Liberals who paved the way in 1996 and showed the Conservative Party how to use the EI fund as a cash cow for everything except income maintenance for unemployed workers.

It was the Liberals who were punished resoundingly in the province of Nova Scotia by six seats because they had the audacity to undermine income maintenance for unemployed workers. They got slaughtered in the election in 1997 as a direct result of using the EI system to pay off their debt on the backs of the most vulnerable people in the country, unemployed workers.

Before I begin my remarks on the bill put forward by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, I must tell the House that the Liberals gave away $100 billion in tax cuts, which they are very proud of and crow about from the rooftops. Let me tell the House where they got that $100 billion to give away to their buddies.

The Liberals took $30 billion right out of the unemployment insurance program, whether we call it stealing or lifting or pilfering, and not one penny of that was their money. It was paid in by contributions from employees and employers, nobody else.

They took another $30 billion from the surplus of the public sector pension plan. Again, they had no proprietary right to the surplus in the pension plan without negotiating it with the beneficiaries. The Liberals took that $30 billion right out of there and used it to do whatever they wanted, from paying down debt to giving tax breaks to their buddies.

The last $40 billion they took was from direct social program cuts.

That is where the Liberals got the $100 billion that they gave away to their buddies.

I must not get completely knocked off my game. I will return to the issue at hand here, which is Bill C-265, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (qualification for and entitlement to benefits), introduced and sponsored by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that working people in Canada have no greater champion on this issue than my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst. He was elected on the basis of his advocacy on this subject and he has been a tireless champion.

Throughout 11 years this June 2, this man has stood up many times to try to drum some reason into the ruling party of the day. There have been nine years of Liberal leadership and two years of Conservative leadership. He has been trying to get it through their thick heads that income maintenance for unemployed workers is a good thing to bridge the gap of employment.

He has been trying to tell them that our system is dysfunctional and broken. No wonder it was showing a surplus of $750 million a month at its peak: nobody was qualifying any more. It is not hard to design a system that shows a surplus if benefits are denied to virtually everybody who applies. That happened for two reasons.

First, the Liberals introduced a system that went to an hours-based system of 920 hours, which made it very difficult for people to qualify for the first time. The bill put forward by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst proposes to reduce the eligibility qualifying time and return it to 360 hours. The benefit would be based on an individual's best 12 weeks.

We know who undermined that at committee. The heart and soul of this legislation, in summary, is that it would reduce the eligibility time so more people would qualify, and it would increase the benefit per week that individuals would receive so they would get a reasonable benefit based on former income. That was undermined at committee by the Conservatives, backed up by the Liberals.

This is a minority Parliament. The opposition parties could in fact effect this change in this finite window of opportunity, but it was gutted, stripped and undermined by the Liberals at committee. Therefore, we are right back where we started. Again we have the same fight of nobody qualifying for eligibility for EI any more and successive ruling parties in government using this fund as a cash cow to pay for everything but income maintenance for unemployed workers.

In 1997 we did a calculation of the impact of the Liberal cuts. In my riding alone, just the riding of Winnipeg Centre, when the Liberals gutted the EI system, $20.9 million a year in federal money that was coming into the riding of Winnipeg Centre was ripped out. It was like losing the payrolls of two huge pulp mills or auto plants. Federal payroll money of $20.9 million a year that was coming into the riding no longer did. It was stopped.

That was true in every riding across the country. There were some ridings in Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec where the impact was in terms of $50 million a year of federal money that used to come into those ridings. In the riding of Acadie--Bathurst, it was $81 million a year.

Do we wonder why the constituents were up in arms and sent the bums running by voting them out of office en masse in those Atlantic Canada ridings? That was the real impact of the changes to EI. Yes, the Liberals might have balanced the books, but they balanced the books on the backs of the people least able to afford it.

I am a journeyman carpenter. I have been on probably 10 different EI claims in my life, which is just a fact of life as an employee in the blue collar industries, but let me tell members about one thing that always bugged me, which neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives ever fixed.

When I was going through my four year apprenticeship, there was a two week waiting period even when I was going to trade school, as if I had been laid off. But apprentices are not laid off: the beauty of apprenticeship is that people earn while they learn. The employers give them six weeks off to go to the trade school and study for those six weeks.

It used to be that we could go right onto EI. That was part of the deal. Then the Liberals introduced a two week waiting period for apprentices, who had to starve and somehow borrow money to bridge that gap. That cost $11 million a year. A lousy $11 million a year would have made people whole for the two week waiting period, at least among the carpenters. I guess we have to extrapolate that to other trades.

That is how nickel and dime they were as they were trying to squeeze every ounce of juice out of the EI system. I will never forgive them for the inconvenience that it caused me and people I know.

Now that the Liberals think they are poised to form a government again someday, they are unwilling to fix the EI system, which they broke. In spite of all their rhetoric and being sympathetic to the issues, they are unwilling to fix it. I listened to that guy from Dartmouth and I could not believe it as he fudged around all of the issues that he knows very well are true.

When we add up the numbers of opposition members in this House of Commons, we see that we can do anything. United, we could bring this government down. United, we could fix the EI system. United, we could have a national pharmaceutical health care plan. United, we could have a national child care program.

We could do anything, but those members have squandered this finite window of opportunity.

I am running out of time, but I want to do justice to the bill that my colleague has introduced and has fought so valiantly for. It must make his blood boil to sit here in the House of Commons today and watch the other parties, the ruling party and its dancing partner, the Liberal Party, once again strip, undermine and destroy his efforts to fix the EI system.

I know that people in his riding had some optimism that perhaps this was the window of opportunity we needed, that surely Parliament would listen to them now that working people are represented in the House of Commons, and now that the three centre-left parties, so to speak, are united in opposition, but no, one of those parties went south on us. The official opposition went south on us, and we lost this again because the Liberals still see the unemployment insurance fund as a cash cow they can milk.

That $54 billion that we will vote on later today in Bill C-50 will be the end of that surplus money. Just let me state for the record one more time in case there is anybody who does not understand it: this is not the government's money. The entire EI fund since 1986 has been made up of contributions from employers and employees. Not one penny has come from the federal government.

When the fund dipped into deficit for a few years in the early 1990s, the total accumulated deficit was $11 billion. That was paid back, so as for the government taking $54 billion now and leaving only $2 billion in the kitty, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour says we should not call it theft, but I am at a loss for words for what else we would call it. It is simply not the government's money to use as it sees fit.

It is not too late, I urge members, to support my colleague's amendments to reinstate these conditions to make the unemployment system work. I call on all members to vote in favour of the amendments he has put forward today.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 6th, 2008]

Because you are a bunch of crooks and the Canadian people threw you out.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Trinity—Spadina for speaking for all of us in this room about the difficulties we have in trying to service the thousands of immigration cases that come to our office out of sheer desperation. People do not know where else to go. They are desperate by the time they come to an MP's office because they have tried and failed to get basic information from a system that is so clogged up, so bottlenecked and so dysfunctional that they feel they have no avenue of recourse.

People watching at home might be wondering why, in the context of a budget implement bill, we are talking about the Canadian immigration system and its foibles. They should be made aware that this budget implementation bill has a key element to it to reform, in a radical way, not improve, but change the immigration system.

The basic unfairness, as my colleague points out, is that we, as representatives of Canadians, will not get an adequate chance to debate properly the immigration changes while we are debating the budget implementation bill because it does not properly belong here at this time.

However, if the bill passes, and I have a hunch it will pass, immigration law and practice will change for the worse, we argue, in a very dramatic and significant way.

My colleague pointed out that the changes contemplated to the immigration act in Bill C-50 would actually enhance the discretionary powers of the minister. Did I understand her correctly? Will the minister be, more than ever, able to make arbitrary rulings on things that should properly go to a tribunal, a panel or some due process? Is this one of the hazards that she is alerting us to today, the enhancing of the discretionary power of the minister at the expense of due process, as most Canadians would understand it?

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, again, if we read the language that Madame Dawson chose very carefully about the member for West Nova, if he was in contravention of the section 8 and section of the code, it was not by design, it was by accident. He inadvertently found himself in that situation and there was no fault assigned, or blame or accusation that he conspired to be in violation of the code. It was one of those inadvertent things that happened by a series of events beyond his control.

This is another good reason why we need to amend the Conflict of Interest Code, because it could happen to any one of us tomorrow morning. It may be happening to me right now as I speak. Somebody could be filing papers in some courtroom somewhere, saying that I said something libellous and I would be barred and precluded from raising that subject until the court case had played itself out, which as we know could be 18 months or 2 years down the road. This is an impossible situation and it cries out to be corrected.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yes, it seems there is a creep, so to speak, taking place in the interpretation of the Conflict of Interest Code, as it pertains to MPs, in the Standing Order, the idea of private interests or possible private interests or contingent liability. We are dealing with sections 8, 12 and 13 of the Conflict of Code. The member for West Nova was found to be in contravention of all three, but for subtly different reasons, which I do not think are important enough to go into.

What is important is we need to amend the Conflict of Interest Code in the Standing Orders to make it abundantly clear that members of Parliament are not automatically deemed to be in a conflict of interest just because they are players in a libel suit. Nothing in what we recommend says members should not be used if they say something libellous. They made their beds and they can sleep in them. However, they should not be precluded or barred from speaking about that subject matter for the whole duration of the lawsuit until it gets resolved. The Standing Orders need clarification on that.

Again, I remind people that the very last page of the Ethics Commissioner's report on the inquiry into the comments made by the member for West Nova says:

Concerns have been raised about the use of lawsuits, more particularly libel suits, to prevent a Member from performing his or her duties in the House of Commons. I cannot predict whether this may indeed become a problem and I hope it does not. Should this become a serious concern for Members, however, the Code could be adjusted to except libel suits from the ambit of “private interest” for the purposes of sections 8 and 13.

This is exactly what the opposition day motion put forward by the Liberals intends to do. That is why we recommend that all members support it and clarify this issue once and for all.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I understand my colleague's point and he made it with previous speakers as well. The point I am making is nothing in today's motion says that members of Parliament should have the absolute freedom to go around and say whatever they want and not be sued. All the same limitations will still continue to apply to an MP. If members do say something that is possibly libellous and they get sued, that should not automatically put a gag order on them to deal with that issue while that court action plays itself out. That is the difference here.

To answer my colleague's question about the advantage or disadvantage, he should have more confidence and more faith in our judges and in the judicial system. When this lawsuit is finally heard by a judge, and I do not believe Mr. Mulroney will see the lawsuit all the way through, the judge is not allowed to use anything heard at the parliamentary committee. It is excluded; it is privileged. Any good lawyer representing Mr. Mulroney, who will be well represented, can stand, if there is something damaging about the questioning of the member for West Nova to Mr. Mulroney, and ask that it be excluded and the judge will only be allowed to consider what is presented as testimony in that court case. I simply do not buy that an MP would have an unfair competitive advantage in the subsequent court case based on what happened at the committee.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I was trying very hard not to use personal names. At least it shows that you are listening to my speech, so I am flattered in a sense that you could correct me that way.

The member for West Nova was accused of making libellous comments about former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He had in fact sued him.

What happened at the committee, Madam Dawson puts in her inquiry report that she tabled with the House of Commons, and the words of the member for West Nova I think are useful to us. As soon as my colleague from Dufferin—Caledon, the other vice-chair of the committee, raised a point of order saying that perhaps the member for West Nova should not be allowed to take part in this study because of the potential conflict of interest, the immediate gut reaction of the member for West Nova, with no research, matched exactly what my gut reaction was. He said:

As to the alleged, supposed, proposed...legal action, [which he said he had no knowledge of at that time] against a member of the committee....it wouldn't be very long before we would have 308 lawsuits in this House of Commons against everybody for minor matters, dilatory matters, to try to remove members of Parliament from being able to debate questions of interest where it would serve somebody out in society better to have them not participate.

That sums it all up. I do not need to make a 20 minute speech to explain what is potentially disastrous about the current state of affairs.

I used as an example in my comments about this that I have said some strong things about the pharmaceutical industry. I have alleged that it fixes prices and charges the public way too much for products where the industry does not really have to and that the drug patent price protections gouge Canadians.

Those are pretty strong words. I do not think they are libellous. They do not have to be libellous. Big pharma could file a statement of claim saying that I said something libellous and under these rules I would not be able to talk about big pharma again until that lawsuit was settled. That would put me at a terrible disadvantage. If big pharma was called to the health committee to talk about the drug patent laws, I would not be able to ask questions about it, even though it is a very particular interest of mine. Big pharma would have effectively silenced one of its annoying critics by simply filing that lawsuit. Even if it knew full well that it would lose the lawsuit two years later, it would have shut me up. It would have effectively put a gag order on me if we follow the strict and literal interpretation of what happened in the case of my colleague from West Nova. We cannot allow that to happen.

Some of the points made by my colleague from Dufferin—Caledon seem reasonable. We should be having this debate. I disagree with him that the process is flawed. He says that this is not the place to debate such a serious change to the Conflict of Interest Code. This is exactly the place. In fact if we farmed it off to a small minor subcommittee of Parliament, like procedure and House affairs, it would not be in the full context of all of Parliament debating these rules. It would be that narrow representation on a dysfunctional committee that has not sat for months. This is exactly the place in which we should be having this debate and raising the cautionary tale that is triggered by Madam Dawson's ruling.

I am speaking on behalf of my colleague from West Nova because he is not allowed to. We should make that clear. He would be making this speech today if he were not barred by this gag order. If Brian Mulroney and his lawyers had not effectively silenced my colleague from West Nova, he would be making this speech, not me, and we would not have to speak on his behalf.

Out of the esteem for my colleague, I am going to quote him a lot on Madam Dawson's report. The member for West Nova said:

So in the interest of democracy, Mr. Chairman, and of parliamentary tradition, I hope you have a serious look at this preposterous suggestion by [the member for Dufferin--Caledon].

The second question I ask is, how could [the member for Dufferin--Caledon] possibly be aware of a legal action that I'm not aware of?

In other words, even before a person is served with papers that he or she is being sued, apparently the person is barred from talking about that issue. If the statement of claim had just been filed at the courthouse even before the person was notified, apparently the person is barred from talking about it.

The member for Dufferin—Caledon said, “he does, with due respect to the member for West Nova, have a pecuniary interest. He is being sued for a lot of money”. Again, the member for West Nova was not aware of this yet. Somehow Brian Mulroney told the member for Dufferin—Caledon before he told the member for West Nova. The member for Dufferin—Caledon said:

That's called pecuniary interest. And it is in his personal interest that the plaintiff in that particular action look badly. I don't think he should have the right to vote in this committee, nor should he have the right to vote in Parliament.

The member for Dufferin—Caledon is recommending that the member for West Nova not only be silenced, but he be stripped of his right to vote on these issues as well. That speaks to the very heart and soul of a member's parliamentary privilege. If there is ever any doubt that there is overlap here in terms of parliamentary privilege, there certainly is in the mind of my colleague who initiated this whole complaint.

There is a time honoured tradition among activists. I consider myself an activist. As a trade union leader, I have been on a lot of picket lines and I have demonstrated on a lot of issues. There is a time honoured tradition in the corporate world called the SLAPP suit. If somebody is annoying someone else, let us say if Greenpeace is annoying Exxon, one way to slow down one's critics is to file a slap suit. Usually the big corporate entity has a lot better ability to withstand a prolonged legal battle than does the small citizens activist group.

The SLAPP suit has been an effective means ever since the ban the bomb movement in the late 1950s and the 1960s. If we are being too effective and we are starting to press a nerve in the corporate world, we might get our butts sued even though we know full well we are in the right and the corporate world is in the wrong. The corporate world can drag it out for year after year in the courts, and will exhaust our resources. It will effectively silence us, or it will at least handicap and hobble us.

That is what is happening here today. This is the most litigious government probably in the history of Canada. I have never heard of so many lawsuits in the course of one minority Parliament. There is a case where the government is suing the leader of the official opposition. I have noticed that the leader of the official opposition does not ask questions directly on the Cadman issue any more, even though it is a matter that the Liberal Party feels is critically vital and a matter that should be raised in the public. I presume that is the reason the leader of the official opposition stays away from that subject, because there is a lawsuit pending. Again it stems from this reasoning.

The government could do that with every annoying issue. It can and it would. I predict, as I said before, there would be lawsuits flying back and forth across this place so frequently we would think we were in a snowstorm.

The first step the Ethics Commissioner does is consult with the parties and gets their statements from them. Again, on behalf of the member for West Nova, I will argue his case in his words. He wrote in a letter to the Ethics Commissioner:

It is, indeed, preposterous to suggest that a legal action--whether real or merely threatened--against a Member about a very public issue automatically makes that issue one of potential private loss or gain under the Code, thereby silencing the Member with regard to that public issue.This would mean that any citizen wishing to silence any Member of Parliament need only engage a publicity agent to announce that he is commencing legal action against the Member. In conclusion, I believe [the member for Dufferin—Caledon's] position of to be a perversion of the Code, which is not and was never intended to be a vehicle for attempted gagging or intimidation of Members of Parliament.

I agree that is a perversity. It is an interpretation of the code that was never intended. We have stumbled across it now, and it is incumbent on us to deal with it now, to fix it, to correct it. I compliment my colleagues of the Liberal Party for choosing to use their opposition day motion to get this issue on the floor of the House of Commons.

We cannot allow this to continue, or I am going to get sued next, or my colleague, the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe. He is fairly outspoken and has many strongly held views on many subjects. I have no doubt he will get his butt sued sooner or later in an attempt to stop him from talking and to silence him.

It is a complex opposition day motion. It has four separate elements to it, two of which are not action oriented and two that are. One is that the House affirms its confidence in the Ethics Commissioner and that the House reaffirms all of the well-established privileges and immunities, especially with regard to freedom of speech. Those two, I suppose there can be no disagreement on. All members of Parliament know that we cannot operate without those basic rights.

I do not understand why my colleague from Dufferin—Caledon is alleging there are two classes of people in the country if members of Parliament have privileges that members of the public do not. There are very sound and established reasons that members of Parliament have a so-called super freedom of speech. There are checks and balances in place as well in that what a member says here cannot be used anywhere else anyway.

For my colleague to say that the member for West Nova would have had an advantage over the other player in the court action by having the ability to speak about that court action in the standing committee is kind of bogus, because whatever he says at that standing committee cannot be used in any other subsequent proceeding. It did not exist for all intents and purposes. When and if that libel action goes to court, the judge will rule on the evidence presented in the courtroom, not on what was said at a parliamentary committee, because any good lawyer would stand up and say that it is inadmissible. What the member said at the standing committee to the other player in that court action would be of no use and no value.

Whatever seems to be a special privilege is offset by a corresponding limitation. In other words, that is one of the reasons a witness at a standing committee does not have the right to remain silent. The reason is self-evident, but the safeguard, the check and balance, is that the person has to answer the question, but what he or she says cannot be used against him or her in any subsequent court proceeding. In fact, it is even fruit of the tainted tree in terms of evidence. Whoever wanted to charge one with that issue would have to find some independent body of information not related to the testimony the person gave at the committee. I think that is brilliant, frankly. It took us a thousand years or so to arrive at that, but that is one of the fundamental rules of privilege as it pertains to Parliament that we now come to understand as being fundamental.

Sometimes it is important to take one step back from the day to day events of Parliament, to pause and reflect on first, how beautiful an institution this is and how well it actually does work, and second, how we make sure that it is never eroded or undermined and that the efficacy is not chipped away at by interpretations such as this. It has to be fluid, just like the Canadian Constitution has to be flexible and adaptable. It is not static; it is dynamic. So too is Parliament and the rules that govern Parliament.

We have stumbled across an area that needs attention and it is an appropriate time to do this in a minority Parliament. In the twilight days of a parliamentary session, I think our time is well spent if we address this issue now, to lay that good foundation so that we can do more effective work in the future unencumbered.

We support this opposition day motion and will be voting in favour of it. I thank my colleagues from the Liberal Party for choosing what we have before us today as their opposition day motion .

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to enter in to this important debate. It is important to pause in the regular order of business and take one step back to make sure that the fundamental ground rules are in place so that we can do our ordinary order of business more properly.

We are faced with a situation where one of our colleagues, specifically, but all of us, generally, may be precluded from doing our job to the best of our ability and living up to our obligations due to the ruling made by the Ethics Commissioner dealing with our colleague from West Nova in the context of the Mulroney-Schreiber airbus inquiry.

The motion put forward today contains four points. It is quite thorough and comprehensive and quite well crafted in that way. It begins with a categorical statement of which we should all take note:

That this House reaffirm all of its well-established privileges and immunities, especially with regard to freedom of speech;--

My colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River walked us through some of the history of how we arrived at that and how necessary that notion is for Parliament. In fact, he traced its history back to 1689 and the original Bill of Rights in the UK, which forms a part of our Canadian Constitution.

The second item in this comprehensive opposition day motion states:

that, in order to clarify and assure those privileges, Section 3(3) of the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, which is Appendix I to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, is amended by deleting the word “or” at the end of paragraph (b) and by adding the following after paragraph (b):

I will paraphrase the paragraph. It should be made abundantly clear in the Standing Orders, that govern the conduct of members of Parliament, that members are not in a conflict of interest just because they are engaged in a lawsuit or a lawsuit has been filed against them. That in and of itself does not automatically put members in a position of conflict. That is the important amendment that we have to contemplate here today.

I will deal with these points one at a time after I have introduced them.

The paragraph goes on to say that the House should refer the Thibault inquiry report back to the Ethics Commissioner for reconsideration in light of the recommended change to the conflict of interest guidelines in the previous paragraph.

Finally, and important to note, the opposition day motion we are dealing with today states:

that the House affirm its confidence in the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

In other words, nothing that we are saying today in the context of this debate is to be viewed as a statement of non confidence in the Ethics Commissioner.

Most of us would agree that the Ethics Commissioner made the only ruling that she could given the current language of the Conflict of Interest Code which forms part of the Standing Orders of the House. She herself realized that her ruling may be cause for great concern.

I should begin my analysis of the opposition day motion perhaps with her final observation on the last page of the report. Ms. Dawson said:

Concerns have been raised about the use of lawsuits, more particularly libel suits, to prevent a Member from performing his or her duties in the House of Commons. I cannot predict whether this may indeed become a problem and I hope it does not. Should this become a serious concern for Members, however, the Code could be adjusted to except libel suits from the ambit of “private interest” for the purposes of sections 8 and 13. Such a step would not appear to be necessary, in any event, in relation to disclosures under section 12.

Clearly, she contemplates that her ruling, accurate as it may be, may alert members of the House of Commons that the Conflict of Interest Code may have the inadvertent effect of interfering with their privileges to speak freely in the House of Commons on issues that concern them.

Let us take a step back then, as I explain the NDP's view of this whole situation.

I should tell members at the outset that I am the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and my colleague, the member for Dufferin—Caledon, is the other vice-chair of the committee.

This whole inquiry by the Ethics Commissioner stems from a complaint that he filed dealing with whether or not the member for West Nova should be barred from questioning our witnesses in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair on the basis that there was, in fact, a lawsuit filed by Brian Mulroney, suing Mr. Thibault for comments he made outside the House and outside of the parliamentary committee.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I honestly believe the member for Dufferin—Caledon is too good a lawyer and too good an MP to honestly believe the speech he was sent here to read just 10 minutes ago. He is either using some kind of wilful blindness or he is simply buying into his party's excessive use of the ability to silence another MP, and he is putting his own judgment to the side.

Would he not admit that the Conservatives have found an effective to silence any nuisance MP who might be harping on an issue that is embarrassing to their government? Tragically, our colleague from West Nova is not here to speak on his own behalf because he is barred from speaking on this subject by the Ethics Commissioner under the current court ruling. Does he not agree that what the Conservative Party is engaged in, in an increasingly frequent way, is the time honoured tradition of the corporate SLAPP suit, where one slaps a lawsuit on nuisance critics to shut them up, even if one knows full well that lawsuit is frivolous?

Does he not think we are on the slippery slope, where that will become a frequent thing in the House, since there will be lawsuits flying in both directions, willy-nilly? There will be so much paper flying around we will think we were in a snowstorm, just to silence MPs from being a nuisance, or in other words, doing their job?