Yes. It's vegetable salad, not word salad. That would be welcome progress for this committee.
Thank you, Ms. Tassi, for your intervention on the question of privilege. I maintain my view that the approach taken by the government on this was without precedent, it was not appropriate, and it was a demonstration of bad faith by those who moved this motion in the House to adjourn the debate, bad faith with respect to the opposition. Essentially, none of the arguments that have been made have addressed that aspect of it. It is perfectly allowable for members of the government to vote against the question of privilege, which is perhaps something that they don't want to do, because it sounds like there's some acknowledgement of the importance of it.
The amendments are just that. They're amendments. The government members are welcome to vote against the amendments while still supporting the privilege motion. In particular, the amendments that were mentioned were separate amendments. The amendment asking for precedence to be taken over other matters and the amendment to set a timeline were separate amendments. One could conceivably support one and not the other, or neither, but still support the main motion, or support both and the main motion, or some other combination thereof.
If the issues with the way in which this process was unfolding were purely with the amendments proposed, and not with the motion itself and not with discussion of the issue, then that could have been brought up. What the government didn't do, of course, was to bring in closure on these questions and then proceed to votes on the amendments, or to just allow the debate on the privilege question to unfold—which would probably have been the proper thing to do—and then collapse, and then follow it up with votes on the privilege motion. Then, depending on what is passed in the House, PROC would proceed accordingly.
That's not what happened. The government moved to adjourn the debate without having that vote take place. That was really the crux of the issue, right? That was the whole point of this example of the total loss of faith on the part of the opposition in terms of the government's willingness to play fair and respect the institution. It was the fact that they sought to adjourn the debate. It wasn't that they opposed the amendment. If they had wanted to oppose the amendment, that would have been fine, although I think that would have been the wrong decision to make and I would have argued against it. But if they had opposed the amendment, that would have been the reality. They didn't do that. Instead, they tried to adjourn the debate, and then, I think quite rightly, that was addressed in a response by the Speaker.
Now, my colleague points out that a motion was moved here at PROC. This is important. This is not the process by which privilege questions are adjudicated. The process, which is fundamental to the way privilege questions are adjudicated, is this: a member raises the issue in the House; there is a finding of a prima facie case—or not—by the Speaker; there is a debate in the House; and, then there is a vote on the question of privilege, which sends it to PROC for study. That's how privilege questions are adjudicated.
Of course, yes, I could move a study at the library committee on an issue of privilege. I could do that. If the library committee wanted to study it, they could study it, but that would not replace the process that exists for questions of privilege. That committee study, while important for the process of privilege, does not in any way negate the importance of also having the debate take place in the House and of having a vote in the House. The House is supposed to consider and vote on the question and then send it to PROC and say that this is something they want studied, yes, that it's important, and that they have a concern. The committee then needs to proceed with it.
That's how that question is adjudicated. None of the points that Ms. Tassi made change the fact that the government tried to adjourn and therefore end the debate in the House on this question of privilege and prevent a vote. The fact of a separate proposal for a study of that question of privilege in no way replaced or changed what happened in the House, which further establishes that, in the present climate, the opposition cannot trust the good faith of the leadership team on the government side with respect to matters of procedure. It's what makes the passage of this amendment so important. It is the insurance that we need in the absence.... It probably would be good insurance to have in any event, quite frankly, because any time someone says that they don't need to pass that but they'll do it anyway, you might say, “Wait a minute: why don't you just pass it?” Especially in the current climate, it is important that we pass the amendment because of these things that have happened in the House.
Further to Ms. Tassi's points, she talked about the proper way in which the House does or does not or can or cannot instruct committees. Now, in this Parliament alone, many motions have been dealt with that deal with instructions to a committee. The most obvious example, I think, is actually the first NDP opposition day motion, which was to create a pay equity committee and instruct it to do a study of a particular issue. If I remember it right, that opposition day motion did include a specific time as well, so not only was it giving an instruction with a timeline to a committee, but it was creating a committee for the purpose of doing a specific study with a specific timeline.