Mr. Simms is right at the heart of the issue.
The other thing I want to underscore is that it doesn't get any more egregious than missing a vote. It makes me wince to think that someone missed a vote because they couldn't get here, which of course is why MPs have unfettered access, because who knows where that leads, ultimately, if it's okay to physically stop members from getting into the House?
The other thing I want to mention, on a positive note, since we're kind of going backwards and you can that see each time we visit it, it gets worse, up to the point now where we have hours and hours, members who missed votes.... It didn't get to that degree as we move closer to modern time, so it does show that we're making progress, but we're still not there. I have to tell you that I'll be shocked if this is the last time we ever deal with it before we finally get to the point where the planning for the security of guests has a secondary priority, that is, make sure that MPs can get to the House. We have to keep saying that over and over.
It made some gains, given the fact that we just heard that most of the RCMP back in that day and the other police—and probably a whole lot of other people—had no idea that this right existed. Now, we're at least at the point where they know that this has existed, and it's just still being curtailed in ways that are unacceptable. Just to be as positive as we can, we are making some headway. We're getting closer and closer, but “closer” is not good enough when it's an absolute right.
The last thing I want to say on this fight is that one of the things we risk when we do this is having people sitting back and saying, “Bloody MPs who are so special and elite.” You know what? That's a risk that we have to run. We need to take that heat, because for everybody who came before us, they were prepared to take their heat to make sure that for the future—for us, who they didn't even know—they were protecting our rights. When we're doing this, it's not just for us while we're here. More importantly, it's for the institution and for members of Parliament in the future. It's up to us on each of our watches to make sure that those rights are preserved. Otherwise, they are lost.