Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think I'll leave it largely to my colleagues to deal with the issue of the whole debate about whether there is a significantly appropriate process and sufficient sanction in place to prevent premature release of committee reports and sensitive in camera discussion or information.
I want to give a whip's perspective on the other issue that you addressed, which is the whole business about whether the committees—standing committees, legislative committees—if they're within the parliamentary precinct, should be required to suspend their meeting, their session, to allow their members to attend the House and vote on a recorded division in the chamber. This particular example, although it has arisen in previous Parliaments, arose, as you noted, with the industry committee.
As one of the four whips in the House, I would say that part of our responsibility as whips is the requirement that we do everything possible to ensure that our members are present for votes. Obviously our respective leaders look to us to ensure that happens.
I note that when Mr. Rajotte rose in the chamber to raise this as a question of privilege, he talked about the conflict that would exist for each individual member of a committee where the majority is denying the minority the right to suspend and go to the chamber to vote, because obviously one of our primary responsibilities, if not the primary responsibility as a member of Parliament, is to represent our constituents in the chamber for votes. It's a responsibility that I would allege, regardless of party, all members take extremely seriously. Obviously you want to be in the chamber to cast your vote on behalf of your constituents. It's a fundamental tenet of our democracy.
On the other hand, because of the uniqueness of a minority government situation where, in this particular instance, the government could not withdraw quorum by walking out en masse and going to vote, they were faced with a dilemma and were torn between two conflicting responsibilities: one, to represent their constituents in the House of Commons at the vote; and the second, to perform their parliamentary duty of continuing to sit at the committee and ensure that their votes, if any, would be recorded there.
The committee was dealing with a sensitive issue at the time as well, and if the government members left, they were left with the difficult choice that they didn't know what would transpire at that committee. In this particular instance it was the government, but it could have been some other party that was faced with some similar dilemma. If they were into a process, for example, it's not unheard of at committee where even one of the smaller parties would be filibustering to try to prevent that committee from achieving some aim that was contrary to that party's position.
So I believe this is an extremely serious issue, and I personally believe, both as a whip and as a member of Parliament, that the Standing Orders should be adjusted, such as it is, I understand, in Britain, where they must adjourn at least temporarily to allow the members of any committee within the precinct to attend the vote. As way of background, that's where I'm coming from on it.
There are two potential courses of action that you've suggested to committee. One is that each committee at the beginning of a Parliament could adopt their own specific motion on how to deal with this potential conflict. In my view, that's a bit cumbersome. I think we'd be better off to adjust the Standing Orders themselves—which was your second point—so that all committees are uniform in how they approach this potential conflict for their members.
That said, you did raise this issue and I wrote it down. You said that traditionally the House has been leery of restricting the power of committees to be complete masters of their own proceedings. While I think all of us have some sympathy for that and we want to proceed very carefully, I wonder if you could indicate specifically what your concerns would be in that regard, why we wouldn't want to proceed with a standing order in this specific issue.
In my opinion, we're not taking a lot of power away. To suggest that we respect the fact that individual members of Parliament, especially in a minority situation, could be in a real dilemma, it actually could, as I pointed out to colleagues, result in the fall of the government if it were a confidence vote and some committee is denying those members the right to go and cast their ballot. It's possible, depending on how the members of that specific committee were going to vote on a specific division in the House.
So given the seriousness of it, Madam Clerk, I wonder if you could give us any more insight into what your sense is on whether we want to respect the traditions of the House, which is not to impose any restrictions on the committees, versus this particular move to have some temporary adjournment put into the Standing Orders.