Chair, in my opening comments I was going to speak directly to what David had been arguing, but if you would like me to do it in response to his point of order, I certainly will, and that is simply this. Literally, I think it would be impossible for the Board of Internal Economy to try to anticipate what transgressions might occur and put in rules, procedures, and bylaws in advance of those. It just doesn't happen. Clearly the board felt that what the NDP had been doing was outside the norm, and therefore, to try to clarify that, enacted their new procedures.
I would point out that prior to that, even though Mr. Christopherson and Mr. Julian argued that it must have been okay because there wasn't a rule preventing them from doing it to begin with, which I think is a very specious argument.... I would point out the example of Mr. Duceppe, when he basically was doing the same type of thing. If you recall what Mr. Duceppe was doing, he had hired the executive director of the Bloc Québécois to be his chief of staff here in Ottawa and was paying him through parliamentary resources. Then, of course, he argued that he would have the chief-of-staff hat on when he was here in Ottawa, and then when he'd go back to Montreal, he'd put on his party hat, his executive-director-of-the-party hat, but he was still getting paid out of parliamentary resources
The Board of Internal Economy took a long look at that, felt that the actions of Mr. Duceppe were inappropriate, and issued a ruling. I want to quote the last—