No, but there is a reasonable way to respond to this. The word “filibuster” is not necessarily one that means something bad in all cases. All parties have engaged in it when they have believed that procedures were not being used correctly. Sometimes it's appropriate to do that. It's also a matter of definition as to what counts as a filibuster and what doesn't. But I think we need not, if we know the history of, for example, the free trade negotiations or the GST debate, think that it has only been the Conservatives who've engaged in this practice and who have thought it reasonable when the circumstances have warranted. That's just a general observation on filibusters.
At any rate, going back to the original process, this is a process that is very likely to happen once it becomes apparent that the process of rushing something through in this committee isn't available. That really is the point of what I'm doing here today, and I think what all of our colleagues on the Conservative side are doing, as we express our views at some length. That's hopefully a message that our esteemed opponents on the other side are picking up on.
Having said that, I wanted to come back and deal a little bit with the question that we are suggesting, through this subamendment, ought to be addressed first by this committee, and that is the question of privilege. We were all either present in the House when the ruling was made yesterday.... I certainly listened with considerable attention both to the Speaker's ruling and to the response. I have to be honest; I'm not sure if there was more than one response, but I listened to the response of Mr. Mulcair of the New Democrats.
There are two points to be made about this. The first point he made was that items of privilege are normally the primary items. They take the highest ranking in the order of precedence in this committee and automatically trump other items. So it is certainly irregular--it's not the usual practice of this committee--to set them aside in order to deal with some other matter. They automatically take precedence. Certainly another matter that might be time consuming we don't want to put in the way of these things, so it is just an unusual practice not to have said “This goes to the top of our list of priorities”. I think for that reason it would be a wise idea to adopt the subamendment and then the amendment. Then, based on that, that would mean looking at the original motion, but doing so after having dealt with this matter of privilege. That was the first point I wanted to make in regard to this.
The second point I wanted to make, and this will be the last comment I'll make before turning over the floor to others, who may have observations to make, is that the Speaker, in his ruling--and I regret that I don't have a copy of the ruling here or I would read it verbatim into the record to remind everybody about just how wise it was, and I see the clerk looking over her shoulder, and she may have a copy there that we could do that with--emphasized that this is a matter that deals not with the privileges of an individual member, and many items of privilege are in fact items that deal with the privilege of a specific individual member, as, for example, a few years ago, when I raised the point that a number of Liberal members had gone through confidential personnel records, including my own personnel records from when I was an employee of the leader of the then Reform Party--