Indigenous Languages Act  Madam Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues who are here, and in particular, I want to thank my colleague who just spoke, the member for Cariboo—Prince George. I also want to thank my colleague from Nunavut for being here. Some of the comments I will be making today relate to the Inuktut language and may be of interest to him.

Indigenous Languages Act  Mr. Speaker, my question relates to the Inuit, who are not necessarily very happy with this Liberal piece of legislation. Their concern is that it does not address the particular concerns of their language, Inuktitut. Fundamentally it does not address the fact that the Inuktitut language is so strong a language, so robust, for reasons that have to do with demographics and geographical isolation and so on, that its concerns are very different from those of any other indigenous language in the country.

Elections Modernization Act  Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. We are down to the very last moments of the member's speech. This is his last chance in this House for the next decade to get back on topic under discussion.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made more of a comment than a question. I will take the advantage of developing the theme he expressed as follows. There are widely spoken indigenous languages in Canada: Cree, Oji-Cree, Inuktitut and several others, the “big six” that have over 10,000 speakers each.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I could respond by just saying, yes, but I will make a point. There is not enough time for me to ask him a question about the status of languages, whether they are endangered or robust. I am unfamiliar with the details in his riding with regard to those languages. All of these languages are as important to those who speak them, those who were born into them and those who can most fully express themselves as the more widely spoken languages.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portage—Lisgar for generously giving me half her time and the opportunity to speak on this subject. I was a member of the procedure and House affairs committee that dealt with this issue. I have some prepared remarks, but I am going to depart from them for the first part of my comments.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I, too, am presenting a petition signed by residents of Ontario in favour of Bill S-240 and also Bill C-350, which covers much of the same terrain. This is essentially about organ harvesting from people who do not want to have their organs removed from their bodies.

Wartime Aviators  Mr. Speaker, a hundred years ago, Canada's wartime aviators were household names. Billy Bishop, the highest scoring ace in the Royal Flying Corps, was Canadian; Raymond Collishaw, the highest scoring ace in the Royal Naval Air Service, was Canadian; so was Andrew McKeever, the highest scoring two-seater ace; so was Roy Brown, who shot down the Red Baron; so too was Alan McLeod, the pilot who became the youngest man ever to win the Victoria Cross.

Elections Modernization Act  Mr. Speaker, my colleague always has intelligent and engaging things to say on this subject and, indeed, on all the subjects which have come across our table at the procedure and House affairs committee. I always find his comments to be a source of insight. It is always a great pleasure to work with him.

Elections Modernization Act  Mr. Speaker, that is my memory as well, but it is very clear that preferential voting was the preferred option for the Prime Minister at the start. There is no doubt about that. I wish he had said so openly. It would have led to a very different reaction in the 2015 election, when many voters fled the New Democrats and perhaps the Green Party as well for the Liberals, especially in British Columbia where this was a live issue for the Liberals.

Elections Modernization Act  Mr. Speaker, frankly, I am not sure I can add to what my colleague just said. Maybe I should let those comments stand. However, it lets me draw attention to another matter that I know is very important to my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona as a New Democrat. That is the justification by the member for Winnipeg North and the defence he gave on delaying the by-election, saying that other by-elections had been delayed in the past.

Elections Modernization Act  Mr. Speaker, for the sake of novelty, I thought I would do my entire speech without yelling or screaming, even once. Let us see if that helps to set the tone for the rest of the debate. I thought it was going pretty well until the last intervention and then we sort of went off the rails.

Elections Modernization Act  Madam Speaker, I am sure this happened unintentionally, but I believe that the member just used an unparliamentary term when she said that the hon. member had been disingenuous. I am sure she meant mistaken, or something like that, but disingenuous implies a deliberate attempt to distort things.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I too am rising with a petition in support of these two bills, one from the Senate and one from the House. The issue of organ harvesting to which attention is drawn by the petitioners is one that has resulted in the deaths of many thousands of involuntary donors of organs, prisoners whose organs are harvested in an abuse of human rights that has had no parallel since the abuses of the Nazis in the Second World War.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, this petition was presented to me by a lady named Anita Payne, who ran against me for the Green Party. She has continued to work hard with both myself and the provincial member, who she also ran against, on behalf of climate change issues. I want to congratulate her on that.