Thanks, Mr. Chair.
It seems that a lot of this hinges on the whole notion around free speech. Again, to go back to O'Brien and Bosc, on page 89, they talk about free speech. In part, they're talking about members not raising “trivial matters as matters of privilege or contempt” and they say that members “should not use the privilege of freedom of speech to be unfairly critical of others in debate”.
As well, on page 62, O'Brien and Bosc talk about the dignity of the House and say, “Any conduct which offends the authority or dignity of the House, even though no breach of any specific privilege may have been committed, is referred to as a contempt of the House.”
The reason I raise this is that on the one hand there is a parliamentary right around freedom of speech, but I also would argue that there should be parliamentary responsibility around freedom of speech. It seems to me that there is a responsibility around freedom of speech. In part, we need to be conscious of the fact that when we speak, we could well impede a member's ability to do their duty because the comments are so outrageous, or harassing, or sexually harassing that they do impede that member's ability to do their job. In part, that may be subjective, but there's also some language in some of the harassment guidelines that have been developed about “should have known” or the intent behind a particular comment.
In your view, is there anything to limit us in terms of looking at the dignity of the House and whether or not the language is so over what a Canadian norm would be? There is nothing to limit us from coming up with a definition that looks at that, is there?