Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her intervention and the amazing work she does on her file and back in her riding as well.
As I sat here and listened to the points she made, I was reminded of the practices that I have seen being amplified in this House since I have been a parliamentarian. Since I have come to this House, I have had my eyes opened. I have seen our parliamentary democracy at work.
Unfortunately what I have seen is the majority in the House over and over again using closure, time allocations, or other tactics to shut down debate.
During question period we see colleagues across the way—ministers, the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, and parliamentary secretaries—getting up time and time again to answer questions in such a way that those who are outside of this House, as well as those of us who are inside the House, are left wondering what the question was because the answers are totally unrelated. They go off into some kind of trajectory. If I were teaching in a classroom, I would be pulling the students right back, saying, “Here is the question; here are the parameters for your answer.”
In a similar way, here we had a very serious issue in the House, before Parliament and before the Speaker. The issue was of contempt. Instead of dealing with it very seriously and in a way that respected every single parliamentarian in this House, as well as this august body in its totality, what we had was, once again, searching the annals of history and putting on the table a very sensitive document that all of us had considerable debate on and that should be debated in a deliberative way.
We were not dealing with something that could be dealt with in a nanosecond, but instead tactics were used to stop this House from hearing a response or having any kind of a discussion on the issue of contempt.
I know I am probably getting very close to stretching my time limits, so the question I have for my colleague is this. Does she feel that the actions taken disrespected the process we have for dealing with committee reports?