Certain aspects do concern me. First of all, the responsibility of the people who guard the House should be to let us go by. We should not have to use the phone. It could happen that the phone doesn't work, or some other such thing. It is up to them to see that this doesn't happen. When it comes to security, there are chiefs, people who are responsible, supervisors.
The officer said this:
“I'm following strict orders”. That's going further than just him. He said, “I'm following strict orders that nobody goes through”.
We have to solve this problem.
Mr. Lukiwski said that the person should perhaps have their identity card or their PIN. But what happens when a member does not have it, and he or she misses the vote and the vote goes the other way? I don't think that is the solution.
They have to be able to recognize the members. They even refused entry to the Speaker of the House of Commons. This is no longer a small problem. Some mechanism has to be put in place and it can't consist in phoning someone and reaching the wrong person. The member shouldn't have to start calling all over the place. Some mechanism has to be put in place for the persons who work at the House of Commons. There is no problem regarding the security guards at the House of Commons. At the door of the House of Commons, there is no problem. We don't have time to discuss it now, but even that should be examined. That day, because the red carpet had been put out, some members had to go through the basement in order to cross to the other side and go up the stairs to go to vote in the House. Perhaps the issue of the circulation of members within the House should be examined as well.
Those are the orders they had received. They told us that they would not stop us from going to the chamber, but that we had to use the basement. Some people use wheelchairs. Our privilege has been violated in the course of the last years.
That is what I had to say on this matter.