Well, in my career I've found that often the very challenging legal issues, and certainly the ones that tended to go all the way to the Supreme Court, which is where most of my advocacy was, were questions where there's no clear legal answer. There may not be one single legal answer. Indeed, administrative law, which is another field that I was involved in, recognizes that and says that oftentimes you'll apply a test of reasonableness because you accept that there's more than one answer. And so you look at who gets to have the last word.
I think, faced with those types of uncertainties, I would look first to Parliament's intent. If we're looking at laws, if we're looking at statutes, what was the intent behind this legislation? What did the lawmakers want? What's the purpose of the statute?
If there's still some clarity at that point, then you look at the purpose of the whole scheme, and as between interpretations, which ones do you put forward? Which one serves the purpose, the mission, of the institution, in this case the House of Commons, the members, and privilege?
There will be some areas where you have to say that there is no law, that there is no legal answer, and then it becomes a policy question or a political question. I think in some cases it's appropriate to say that the law leaves options open, and it's for policy-makers to choose between options that are available to them. The law will not always say that there's only one answer.