OTTAWA–Tom Lukiwski's loose lips long ago earned him legendary status on Parliament Hill as a first-rate filibusterer.

When Conservatives need to rag the puck, they pass it to their Wayne Gretzky of parliamentary stall-tactics.

Lukiwski has paralyzed parliamentary committees with six-hour soliloquys sustained at the request of his superiors.

Just a few weeks ago he strained his vocal chords during a memorable performance where he talked himself hoarse while stalling a probe for days on end into Conservative campaign spending.

When the Tories sought to stall an opposition bill on the Kyoto accord two years ago, they turned it to Lukiwski. He fired off a 120-minute monologue on arcane procedural transgressions by the opposition that even one of his frustrated foes conceded was a historic performance.

Tom Lukiwski's mouth has been his greatest political asset – until today.

When he strode into the House of Commons foyer this afternoon to respond to the greatest scandal of his political career, he was uncharacteristically terse. He shook his head with every sentence. He nervously ran his tongue along his lips. He appeared in every way a human caught in the headlights of an oncoming train.

"I would give anything in the world to take those comments back," Lukiwski said in a few brief remarks before aides pulled him away from reporters asking questions he could not answer.

"I am sorry. I am ashamed. And I wish those comments were never made."

Those comments were aimed at homosexuals.

The man who previously held his Saskatchewan riding – Larry Spencer – was expelled by Stephen Harper from the Canadian Alliance caucus for suggesting gay sex should be criminal.

Lukiwski's curt act of contrition today was a galaxy removed from the swagger of the mustachioed young man seen carrying a beer in a 1991 videotape.

In the grainy, 17-year-old video unearthed earlier today, Lukiwski holds his head high, blinks dramatically, and resolutely asserts that homosexuals are dirty-fingernailed, disease-carrying ``faggots."

Elected to Parliament in 2004, perhaps the most memorable feat of Lukiwski's career came earlier this year when he was called upon to block opposition efforts to probe the Tories' in-and-out spending scheme.

His colleagues would bowl over in laughter and even his opponents would shake their heads in amazement at his series of improbable segues and endless supply of arcane facts.

He could do this for six hours:

"What I have to point out, Chair, is that while that may be true, this committee could come to those very conclusions if they merely accepted the motion I have put forward, and that is to immediately begin examination of our books as well as their own.

"Yet there's simply no appetite on behalf of the members opposite to do such a thing, because it wouldn't be politically favourable for them to do that. Not that they have anything to hide – perhaps they do, but certainly in these cases that I've illustrated they haven't, because they did nothing wrong. But it wouldn't be politically acceptable to have."

Lukiwski's sunny disposition and sense of humour have earned him the affection of his caucus colleagues.

Even his opposition foes appeared to share some appreciation for his antics. When the mic was turned over to another Tory, they would sometimes interject and demand to hear, "More!" from Tom.

One of those opposition MPs with whom he shared a love-hate relationship was Michel Guimond.

But the Bloc Quebecois member summed up the frustration of other opposition members last February as they endured the latest Lukiwski monologue.

"I simply want to tell you that Mr. Lukiwski does not have a right to make just any old insane remarks," Guimond said.