Chair, I'll make the same objection now that I made at the steering committee to the draft report you want to send out. I have no difficulty with the report itself, as issued, but I would make the same argument I made at the steering committee. You are stating in here “The position was reaffirmed by Speaker Milliken...”, etc. That's fine, but there have been different interpretations of that, potentially, and the Speaker himself has suggested that he wanted to wait two weeks for Parliament to come to whatever particular sense of direction was going to come out of that before he would then submit his final ruling on the case.
I certainly would not support this going out before that, although I'm quite comfortable with the content of that. As written yesterday, as a matter of fact, and the day before, in an article by Ned Franks—we've had Ned Franks before this committee a number of times. I can recall the first time. As a matter of fact, the three sitting members were at the committee. He's obviously an esteemed and respected historian as well as a parliamentary expert. As he suggested even yesterday in a publication, there are obviously a couple of different positions on this. Ned Franks suggested that there's one particular side that believes it is their 100% right and due, and there's another position in statutory law, etc. He said he believed this would work itself out within a very short period of time.
I wouldn't want to jump ahead of that, although obviously I'm quite comfortable with the purpose and the intent of recognizing the primacy of Parliament. There's no difficulty with that. I think we all recognize that. But it's a question of under what terms, under what conditions, and under what rules and regulations and special priorities. If we go ahead and move with this now and set the precedent, prior to whatever precedent will be established at the resolution or non-resolution of this case, then so be it.
That's just my personal thought on that. It's not a question of delay. If the Speaker had made his ruling and it was in and done and over with and Parliament was faced with whatever action Parliament would take...but the Speaker left room for “movement”, whatever movement that would be. My interpretation of that was, fine, let's just see what happens on that.
We've had many people from all sides of the coin now who have actually made comment on the Speaker's ruling. I certainly don't take issue with the Speaker's ruling on this. But what I am suggesting is, if we jump that two weeks ahead of his final consideration, or the final deliberation or direction, and send this out to the departments, it could be exactly in tune, but there also might be a modification, a change. I don't know. I can't predict, and I have no ability to be able to do so. Personally, I guess we're closer to 10 days premature now, or whatever the timeline would be.