Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's very clear that we are talking about a change to the rules. Mr. Lukiwski can try to change the process, but we know, since the BOIE told us, that a change was made to the rules. Anyone following this issue knows that no rules were broken. The BOIE issued new rules and we will abide by them, as we abided by the previous ones. There's no doubt about that.
However, the BOIE's change was very partisan. I also deplore the fact that the BOIE has become a partisan tool, just like the other institutions of government. It's not right for a majority government to use all of these institutions as it sees fit and to serve its own interests.
Mr. Chair, Tom Mulcair has been in front of parliamentary committees. He has no problem doing that and responding to the committee.
This government is using its majority to push pretty inappropriate ways of using the institutions to try to crush opposition. Mr. Mulcair, of course, joins what is really good company. We saw the government acting the same way with the Parliamentary Budget Officer, with the Chief Electoral Officer, and now we're seeing it with the Chief Justice, which is unprecedented. Even with Sheila Fraser, who is a personal hero, we have seen how the government treats her. So he's in good company.
The reality is that we're seeing the government using its majority on the BOIE, on the procedure and House affairs committee, in Parliament, to try in some way to push back on somebody like the leader of the official opposition, who has been an incredibly effective questioner in the House of Commons.
It's smoke and mirrors rather than dealing with real issues. If the procedure and House affairs committee were concerned about real issues, the motion that my colleague is bringing before us, which I think is a result of hundreds of pages of information that we've seen in newspapers across the country on the misuse of CIMS, that is something the procedure and House affairs committee could choose to tackle. But we're talking about a majority government using its will to try to deflect from its own shoddy actions.
It's no problem for the leader of the official opposition to come before committee. He's done it in the past. He's done it in a political environment in Quebec City, often with the PQ government using it in somewhat the way the Conservative government tries to use its majority here. That's not the problem. The problem is that the process is inappropriate, and even though answering questions is no problem for the leader of the opposition, I think this government should have thought twice before using all of the tools it has to try to crush opposition.