Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will take the opportunity to stand up as somebody who has been in this House for a long time and have heard a lot of exchanges and have been known to spar and argue and fight with the best of them on the other side of the House, but, Mr. Speaker, I did find Mr. Hawkins’ comments, questions to Mr. Beaulieu yesterday to be offensive and it did, in my opinion, reduce the demeanor of our House.
Mr. Hawkins was asking Minister Beaulieu questions you really couldn’t answer, like, can you do your job. Some of it is even what I would put in the context of asking him for an opinion and the tone was disrespectful and it was demeaning. There was no answer that Mr. Beaulieu could have reasonably provided to those questions. I tried to project myself in that position and if I was being asked those questions, there is no reasonable response when you’re under that kind of attack.
Like I said, I’ve stood up and berated Ministers before. I’ve told them everything I think about them, but I don’t think that it was done in a way that… I like lively debates in this House too. Sometimes it does seem a little dull in here, a little dead, but I think that the tone, the words, the questions that were posed to Mr. Beaulieu yesterday, there was no reasonable response he could have possibly made. Whether Mr. Beaulieu is doing his job or not is entirely a subjective observation and I think there are ways of communicating it without degrading each other. That’s all I’ll say about it. Thank you.