The House will come back to order. Before we get into oral questions, I would like to provide my ruling on a point of order raised by the Member for Kivallivik, Mr. O'Brien, on October 22, 1997. The point of order that Mr. O'Brien raised was under rule 23(1) and I quote that rule: "in debate a Member will be called to order by the Speaker, if the Member imputes false or hidden motives to another Member". The point of order was raised by Mr. O'Brien and is contained on pages 55 and 56 of the unedited Hansard.
Mr. O'Brien raised his point of order in response to the following statement made by the Honourable Goo Arlooktoo, in answering an oral question that had been posed by Mr. O'Brien. Mr. Arlooktoo, in his reply, to a supplementary question, indicated the following and I quote, "There were an adequate number of meetings held of the Steering Committee which the Member chaired of which I understand, the Member also missed several meetings that were very crucial and important". Mr. O'Brien then raised his point of order and stated the following and I quote: "Mr. Speaker, I take exception to the Minister's comments that I, as Chair of the committee, missed several meetings. That is utter nonsense. This is a false statement, and I ask him to retract. Thank you."
Before proceeding with the ruling, I must bring to the Members' attention that the words, false statement and misrepresent have been ruled unparliamentary language, and I urge Members to observe this fact. In the case before us, the rule that Mr. O'Brien cited to raise his point of order was not infringed. I can find no imputation or false or hidden motives in Mr. Arlooktoo's remarks in question. I submit that Mr. O'Brien would have probably raised a point of order under rule 23(j), which states: "charges another Member with uttering a deliberate falsehood".
It is not the responsibility of the Speaker to decide if the account of a situation by one Member is correct versus another Member's interpretation or understanding of a particular situation. I offer citation 494 from Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Form, 6th edition, and I quote: "It has been formally ruled by Speakers that statements by Members respecting themselves and particularly within their own knowledge must be accepted. It is not unparliamentary temperately to criticize statements made by Members as being contrary to the facts, but no imputation of intentional falsehood is permissible. On rare occasions, this may result in the House having to accept two contradictory accounts of the same incident".
As provided for in our rules and further confirmed by citation 494, a Member's statement must be accepted on face value. I trust that no Member in the House would intentionally make any statement that would tend to mislead the House.
Therefore, in this case, I must rule that Mr. O'Brien does not have a point of order and further that this House is prepared to accept more than one account of the same incident in keeping with Parliamentary tradition. In future I would hope that all honourable Members will be more selective in their choice of words, so as to avoid similar, unnecessary occurrences. Thank you. Item 6, oral questions. Mr. Krutko.