I do this with a great deal of regret that I have to raise a question of privilege at committee. I want the committee to work. I want us to find consensus and to be able to work constructively. But there have been a few things that have happened recently that I want to raise as things that I feel are moved by certain individuals to intimidate us as the opposition carrying out our role here.
Page 83 of O'Brien and Bosc says that the “assaulting, threatening, obstructing or intimidating a Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties” would be considered contempt.
I do want to raise these points, and as you know, as Chair, you can't rule on this, but we can make a decision as a committee on whether or not we report this back to the House.
Just bear with me as I go through the process. I don't want to go back and revisit what was clearly laid out in our report tabled in September, which dealt with the breach of privilege that happened here at committee. That's outlined on page 75 and 76.
I do want to say that the one thing we didn't address after that is that those of us on the Conservative side did go and read the blues of the meeting where the report was finalized, and we can say that we found some of the comments made, by particularly you, Mr. Chair, were not at all glowing in any way, shape, or form. We found things that we felt, as opposition members, were destructive to the overall attitude and tenor that we have here and the demeanour with which we should be conducting ourselves as committee members. But since it was done in camera, we can't discuss in public what was said.
I want to go on to talk about a couple of things. First of all, if you look at the last formal meeting, which was on September 29, you'll see we had the substitute parliamentary secretary Leona Alleslev, who is a parliamentary secretary. I raised the point during that meeting that it is against what the mandate letter to the government House leader says.
This is actually a letter from the Prime Minister, and I realize this hasn't been reflected in the Standing Orders yet, but there is a letter from the Prime Minister to the government House leader that says:
Strengthening Parliamentary committees so that they can better scrutinize legislation. This includes: ensuring that Parliamentary committees are properly resourced to bring in expert witnesses and are sufficiently staffed to continue to provide reliable, non-partisan research; strengthening the role of Parliamentary committee chairs, including elections by secret ballot; and changing the rules so that ministers and parliamentary secretaries no longer have a vote on committees.