Liberals are demanding Foreign Minister Peter MacKay apologize for allegedly referring to MP Belinda Stronach as a dog. But the insult isn't the first time civility has broken down in the House of Commons.

Since 1867, MPs have banged on their chairs, mimicked the sound of animals, and even thrown projectiles -- at one point, even firecrackers were thrown across the floor.

Former B.C. MLA Rafe Mair said it was a shocking experience when he first debated in the province's Legislative Assembly.

"I really thought I was going into a debating chamber where I would try to persuade people over to my point of view, and they would persuade me, and out of this crucible of debate we'd get legislation," Mair, now a political commentator, told CTV.ca on Friday.

"It was a horrible, horrible awakening when I found it was nothing of the sort."

He said Parliamentary debate during question period is essentially a way for MPs to let off steam for the general public, but has no real constructive purpose in debating legislation.

One of the most famous rude remarks was uttered by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1971. Conservative MP Lincoln Alexander complained Trudeau had insulted him with an expletive.

"He mouthed two words. The first started with the letter F, the second words the letter O," Alexander told reporters.

Trudeau later denied swearing inside the House of Commons, replying it was just "fuddle duddle."

But like the alleged dog insult, many of the rudest comments have had a chauvinistic bent to them:

• 1984: John Turner greets Liberal Party President Iona Campagnolo by first hugging her, then patting her on the bum. She pats him right back, saying: "That's what you call mano-a-womano."
• 1985: Conservative MP John Crosbie calls Liberal MP Sheila Copps "baby" Copps angrily retorts: "I am a member of Parliament ... I'm not his baby, I'm nobody's baby, and I'd like him to withdraw those remarks." Years later, Crosbie again goads Copps by saying: "Pass the tequila, Sheila, and love me again."
• 1997: Reform MP Deborah Grey is criticizing changes to the Canada Pension Plan, when an MP responds: "I'll tell you what. There's more than a slab of bacon talking there." An indignant Grey replies: "It may be that I'm a porker, but I opted out of that pension plan and the taxpayer doesn't owe me one single penny for that."
• 2006: Liberal MP Denis Coderre, apparently quoting a Greenpeace spokesperson, calls Environment Minister Rona Ambrose "a potted plant."

Copps told CTV Newsnet on Friday that MacKay likely fell into a trap when he made the comment, by responding to Liberal MP David McGuinty's heckling about how the Clean Air Act would affect his dog - a reference to a well-known and ridiculed photo-op of MacKay.

"The Opposition is going to try and bait you. They set him up with the perfect bait and he fell into the trap. I think in that sense, he's got nobody to blame but himself," said Copps.

McGuinty, however, denied he tried to get MacKay to verbally shoot himself in the foot.

"Everyone in the House knows, and most Canadians know, there's an average amount of daily banter that goes on during question period," he told Mike Duffy Live.

"Mr. MacKay is an expert at banter and has been for many years as a member of Parliament. This is a whole different story. It's the response to the banter that counts."

Mair now believes rude comments are an unavoidable part of Parliamentary debate, but that contemporary politicians have "lost the art of the good insult."

He said that his definition of a good insult is anything that adheres to obvious rules of decorum and does not provoke violence. As an example, he used a famous put-down by Winston Churchill, addressed in the British Parliament to Ramsay MacDonald.

Churchill said that as a child he was taken to P. T. Barnum's circus to see an exhibition of sideshow performers. "But the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder,'" said Churchill to MacDonald.

"My parents judged that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench."

Mair added that in contemporary politics, insults sometimes draw more outrage than they deserve.

"I hate to say it, but I think these things are overblown and we've lost our sense of humour," Mair told CTV.ca.

"We've lost the ability to insult and we've lost a taste for sometimes being rude -- rudeness is now sometimes proscribed as being politically incorrect."