Under the privileges of this committee, you have the full protections of parliamentary privilege. For active members of the RCMP, that would include any disciplinary proceedings that were taken against you, the same for any civil servant. For example, if a public servant were before this committee and were to provide testimony and it was determined that any punishments or whatever would follow that, the House could summons whoever was responsible for that and have them answer to the committee and ultimately to the House for their actions.
In other words, the privilege itself basically states that no testimony that's given in a parliamentary proceeding may be questioned in a court or any other place out of Parliament. That would include government departments. It would include the RCMP. It would include the police. So that's the one side of the coin.
For everyone on the other side of the coin, of course, it is that witnesses before parliamentary committees who are sworn.... Of course it is in fact an offence of perjury that could ultimately be followed up if one were to basically perjure themselves before a parliamentary committee. So there is a flip side. The expectation is you'll tell the truth. The committee and the House will protect witnesses against repercussions. At the same time, there are the same sanctions that could occur for anyone who in fact was found to have perjured themselves before a parliamentary committee.