Mr. Chairman, I will continue to address the breach of privilege. Although you played a major part in the debate, today, you are out of line. I will keep going.
I know that Mr. Laforest will raise the matter of a breach of privilege with respect to the right to consult the clerk which, once again, is one of our fundamental rights as members of Parliament. We have the right to say that we will consult the clerk. That is why he is here. I will give Mr. Laforest an opportunity to address that.
Mr. Chairman, we have a motion before us that I believe is in order. You ruled that Mr. Keddy's motion is in order. At least three Committee members stated that they wished to speak to the motion. We raised many points of order, but were unsuccessful. Mr. Chairman, the term “infringe” is not strong enough. You even refused to hear those points of order. We are talking here about rules that were introduced and then completely ignored.
This is the fourth time that we have raised a point of privilege. This did not only happen once. A series of privileges have been breached. Considering the long history of this legislative body and of those that came before it, it is obvious that these rules and procedures were not just written on the back of a napkin. These procedural rules were developed over a thousand years. Mr. Chairman, as you know, the rules have been adjusted, amended and enhanced over time, in order to preserve the principles of privilege whereby members of Parliament, whether they are in the majority or the minority, have the same rights and responsibilities.
Sometimes, as you know, that means that the government cannot just get what it wants by snapping its fingers. It means that the government cannot crush its minority MPs because, under our democratic system, we have certain privileges as members of Parliament. Mr. Chairman, these are things that have existed for many years now. And in a situation like this, it is precisely those privileges and rights that we retain as members that make the difference.
Now, when we quote the rules, what are referring to? To studies conducted in Committee? What would have to happen for something to be deemed a violation of a member's privileges? To answer that question, Mr. Chairman, we have to go back to 1996.
Mr. Chairman, I am going to talk now about someone you know well, I believe. I refer to the former member for Crowfoot, Mr. Ramsay, who did, in fact, raise a point of privilege before the Standing Committee on Justice. At the time, there was the same problem of minority MPs being crushed under the weight of the majority. At the beginning of my intervention, I said that this behaviour—crushing the opposition, infringing their rights and taking away their right to speak, a right established under the Standing Orders, as well as in O'Brien and Bosc—began at the outset of the meeting and has continued.
It is about an inability to acknowledge our desire to raise a point of order and about the four violations of privilege I talked about earlier. At the time, Mr. Ramsay was not alone, because the member for York-South—Weston, John Nunziata, had also raised this. He is a former Liberal member of Parliament who later sat as an independent. He said that, in the context of studies conducted in committee, there is a need to ensure that the chair acts in such a way as to achieve balance. I know that this is not easy, that it can be controversial and that it is really a challenge, Mr. Chairman. We are all strong MPs who know how to argue a point. I may not agree with Mr. Trost or Mr. Holder on a particular issue, but we express ourselves—we all say what we have to say and, occasionally, using fairly strong terms. The exchange we had earlier shows the lengths we are prepared to go to be able to express our views, but the fact that every MP has his own perspective, that he represents a political party and that viewpoints differ from one person to the next may cause problems. What, then, is the chair's role? As was noted at the time by the Speaker of the House, Mr. Parent, he must always give very serious consideration to any questions dealing with the privileges of MPs, and particularly anything that could constitute contempt of the House. He even said that, although the Speaker's preference is always to avoid interfering in the affairs of a committee, there are rules that apply, and you, as chair, as well as all members of the Committee, are required to follow the appropriate rules and procedures.
What did Mr. Ramsay say at the time? Well, he quoted from the sixth edition of Beauchesne, saying that: “The privileges of Parliament are rights which are ‘absolutely necessary for the due execution of its powers’.” He added the following: “As members of Parliament know, these are highly valued privileges. They exist to ensure that members of Parliament, individually, and the House of Commons as a whole, are able to properly fulfill their role as the elected representatives of the Canadian people”. And those same privileges are vested in every member of Parliament that sits in the House of Commons, in order to maintain the authority and dignity of the House and of its committees. While the questions before us are serious, I am inclined to believe that this is a serious grievance that justifies other considerations. That was the answer given at the time, Mr. Chairman, namely that the Committee has the power to examine and amend bills and, as required, report them to the House with or without amendment. Those were the committee privileges invoked at the time, as the Speaker so clearly stated, by many members of Parliament in response to the points of privilege that were raised. While it is often said that the committees are masters of their own proceedings, they remain subject to the House and cannot substitute themselves for it.