Thank you, Mr. Gourde. Please ask me that again on other occasions, because it does inspire me to talk more about the issue. I will do my best to enlighten you.
When I said that the motion takes away a privilege from MPs, I was talking about a privilege they had in the House of Commons. However, they have never had that privilege in committees, and that is how it has been since 1867. The privilege I was talking about earlier is the privilege of going to the House of Commons to express their views; that is the right to speak in the elected House, where nothing is in camera. We want to introduce that right in committees now.
I forgot to mention something and you reminded me by asking for clarifications. If you take away that right from independent members, you may well upset them and they might seek retribution. Since you wanted to take away that privilege in the House of Commons, they could show you what might happen in committees. They might show up at a committee.
The committee rules do not allow them to sit non-stop for three or four days. Committees sit for two hours, then adjourn and come back. In the House of Commons, when we start to sit, a meeting can sometimes go on forever. That is why the Nisga'a agreement had 471 amendments. The work of the House started on Monday and continued until Wednesday morning. I remember that very well. We said no 471 times. Once that was done and over with, we continued studying the bill.
What might happen in one committee may well happen in three or four other committees at the same time. If you take away their privilege in the House of Commons and give it to them in the committee, four independent members could get together, decide to appear before three or four committees studying bills, and take over the committees.
For instance, if a committee is studying a bill on crime, which the Conservatives love, a member could appear before the Standing Committee on Justice to introduce 1,500 amendments to the bill that the government wants to adopt. An MP could simultaneously undermine the business of the finance, environment and transport committees. As a result, no committee, no bill would move forward. Is that what you want?
I suggest that you go and tell your party members that MP Godin might have raised a good point. Your political party might say that it had thought about it and it is fine. However, I don't think you have thought about it.
I am telling you, you should think about consulting with your party's leadership. It is not the end of the world. We could revisit the issue after the parliamentary break, when we are going to work in our ridings. It is really a break, not a holiday. I personally have never gone back to my riding to take a holiday. We are supposed to go back to our ridings to take care of our constituents and work with them. At the same time, we could think about this and decide whether we will move forward with the motion when we come back.
Once again, I ask the government to support our request.
Mr. Gourde, you also seem very concerned about the privilege of MPs. You said that I was contradicting myself, but I am sure you would not want to lose your privilege if you were in the opposition. You will not be on the government side forever. One day, you will be in the opposition. What you are passing today will be in effect later. This story will not be over.
Based on my 16 years of experience in the House as an MP, it was the Reform Party of Canada that came up with this tactic. Once the door was open, we saw that it was an option. However, it has not been used that often. Instead, the practice has been to have little negotiations between the House leaders and the independent members. That usually does not take very long.
In that particular case, the Reform Party did not agree and the debate continued until Wednesday morning. However, in other situations I have seen, the debate stopped. So it wasn't the end of the world.