Mr. Speaker, it is with some passing reflection that I think of how we arrived at this place. The Conservatives came in here on the white steed of transparency and anti-corruption after years of the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

As my friend noted in his speech, we worked with the Conservatives on the Federal Accountability Act, hoping that they would abide by the rule and letter of the law. Now we see a second Conservative being thrown from the House for essentially cheating on an election and taking his seat in the House, which I consider an enormous privilege granted to me by electors in Skeena—Bulkley Valley. The member took his seat in a falsified way. He cheated. He knowingly spent more money than his opponents and then falsified documents in front of Elections Canada officials.

I wonder if the enthusiasm we are suddenly seeing from the Liberal Party in particular about cracking down on cheating during elections existed when they were in power. The sponsorship scandal was essentially manifested in the exact same way, but in a much greater magnitude. Millions upon millions of dollars were shuffled to Liberal coffers from the public treasury to help Liberals win elections, in Quebec in particular.

Initially, the Conservatives wanted to push this off to the procedure and House affairs committee, while still allowing the member for Peterborough to collect his salary. The change that we made and the ruling from the Speaker was to deny him access to his pay, which we suggest was being taken fraudulently because he took his seat fraudulently. How can an individual take money for a job that was not legally earned? Suspending the member and not allowing him to receive salary until the judge's ruling comes down is a natural consequence to the actions taken by the member for Peterborough, while respecting and trying to restore, in some small way, the faith of Canadians in the integrity of the House of Commons.

Is this a sequentially thoughtful and fair way to go about this terrible situation that has been put upon us by the member for Peterborough and, I would suggest, the culture of corruption that is too often pervasive in the Conservative Party of Canada?

Nathan Cullen

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