Mr. Speaker, Conservatives continue to heckle because they have nothing else to say. The point of the effort today is to provide delay and distraction from what has happened, because in setting time allocation on a debate about our democracy, in refusing public consultations on our election laws, Conservatives have abandoned their basic Reform principles so far that it is breathtaking. The founders of the Reform Party have called it such, as Mr. Manning did this past weekend.

To then add insult to injury, in order to then rationalize why this law is needed, Conservatives invent facts, mislead the House, and invent stories that did not happen, as the member for Mississauga—Streetsville did.

They can continue to heckle, only confirming their lack of ability to actually enter into a debate. If they want to have a debate about the election laws in Canada, we welcome it. If they want to have consultation with Canadians, we welcome it. The Conservatives do not. Why? It is because they have to invent things in order to rationalize their bill, to justify their election law.

Then they were caught. What a shame. They were caught misleading the House. The Conservative MP twice told something to Parliament and Canadians watching that was not true and then half admitted that it may have been a misstatement of fact. It is not a misstatement of fact. In common parlance that we are not allowed to use here in Parliament because it is unparliamentary, most Canadians call that a lie. Here we call it misleading the House. The member was found on a prima facie case of contempt. We all know how hard that is to do. It is not easy. A politician has to work really hard to be found in contempt of Parliament, but the Conservative member did. Congratulations to him for such infamy. There are a few on the list—Bev Oda, Art Eggleton—but there are not many who have been able to do this.

They get caught having disdain and disrespect for Parliament. Then in the course of the debate over that motion, they now seek to invoke closure over that. It is not good enough to have been caught; they want the thing to go away. In the midst of all that, to further add insult to injury, they say they do not even want to debate that; so they are going to move a concurrence motion today to take up three hours of the House's time, rather than talk about a Conservative MP misleading the House. That is what is happening today.

The Conservatives purport to be a democratic party of any notion. It is reprehensible that they continue to hold this place in such contempt. The word is an important word, and words matter for those of us who are engaged in this public service. Our words should matter.

The Conservative member for Mississauga—Streetsville was caught out. He told something that was not true in order to rationalize a bad election bill, an unfair election act that would deprive many Canadians of their right to vote and would muzzle the Chief Electoral Officer from talking to Canadians and encouraging them to vote. What modern G8 country would ever have such a thing, where the Chief Electoral Officer is banned from talking to the electorate about the importance and need for voting, particularly those groups who do not vote: poor Canadians, young Canadians, aboriginal Canadians? That is what the Conservatives have done.

In the midst of all that, they invent stories to justify their bill because they do not have anything else. They do not have evidence. They do not have facts. They have not consulted with anybody other than the Conservative Party of Canada, as if it were somehow the vehicle for all good things democratic. This is the same Conservative Party of Canada that perpetrated the robocalls scandal, that used its database to go after Canadians and deny them their right to vote, that broke the election spending limit by the in-and-out scandal, by a bit of a shell game, passing money into a riding then out of a riding, thereby breaking all the election laws.

The Conservative Party was were found in contempt of court. It engaged in what the judge called “trench warfare”.

Nathan Cullen

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