Mr. Speaker, I want to respond briefly to this point of privilege. There are three or four issues and I will be very brief.
The hon. member referred to free speech. I do not believe he has made a case that someone threatened him that he could not speak in the House of Commons or one of its parliamentary committees. That perhaps would be a case to be made, but I do not think it was made. It was not even alleged.
On the matter of what the hon. member called his inquiry, that is a totally inaccurate way of portraying what this aspect of privilege is about. I believe that this has to do with the fact that a parliamentary committee summons people who are supposed to give actual facts, the truth and so on. Nothing ever has said that a member of the House had a right to disrupt some 200,000 civil servants, or whatever the number, by sending them e-mails. I do not believe that anyone could allege that in any way justifies the action taken by the hon. member.
On the issue of confidentiality, has anyone ever heard of a confidential e-mail to 200,000 people? This is what the hon. member is alleging, that his confidentiality has been broken.
Finally, if senior civil servants had directed their staff not to respond to disruptions of their work, whether by a member of this House or by anyone else in the course of their actions, by receiving this material, insulting as it was because I saw it, all the power to them as far as I am concerned.