Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to move quite a bit ahead to subsection 27(2). This has to do with the conduct of inquiries and the proceedings on the conduct of inquiries.
We have seen how the reports have been issued, and issues that have been raised in the House as a result of interpretation of the code and how the inquiries proceed. We thought it might be helpful to provide a bit more clarity in the section.
Presently it says, “The request shall be in writing and shall identify the alleged non-compliance with this Code and set out the reasonable grounds for the belief that it has not been complied with.” There's an avenue for this code to be taken quite broadly, where it might be open to a commissioner to review the Speaker, for instance. If the Speaker were to permit people to speak about something that occurred and was going on that might be part of an inquiry, that isn't necessarily what this inquiry is meant to do.
Of course, we hope a commissioner would view the code and compliance with the code as being the rules of conduct. But it might provide more assistance if, instead of saying “non-compliance under this code”, it said something along the lines of “non-compliance with the rules of conduct” and the rules of conduct were set out under a subsection or heading in this code. Then it might say, “in interpreting the rules of conduct, the commissioner may look at the principles of the code for guidance”, or something like that.
I think that would help show what the inquiries were meant to really address.