Rick, if you impugn someone's integrity, you deserve every language that comes your way. There's nothing more important than a member's integrity, and you have no business impugning mine.
What are you doing right now, Rick? You have brought a privilege motion, an incredibly high bar, and on what basis? Before Mr. Bains was even finished his testimony, you brought a privilege motion.
We're happy to have him back to answer clear questions. Look, I'm not even disputing.... You can say that you didn't like all of his answers, that he wasn't as forthcoming as you wanted him to be. However, you can't say that “I don't recall” isn't an answer. On the one hand, you're saying that he wasn't answering your questions, and on the other hand, you're saying that it's insufficient for him to say “I don't recall”. Unless you're accusing him of deliberately misleading you and members at the committee, unless that's the accusation, which I haven't heard, then your privilege has not been breached.
I want to run through just how high of a standard we are talking about here. I would love at some point—and I'll come back to this—for the clerk and analyst to clarify. I mean, when I run through the rights of members around free speech and the privileges of members, I see that a breach of privilege occurs when there's “Any disregard of or attack on the rights, powers and immunities of the House and its Members, either by an outside person or body, or by a Member of the House”. That's what a breach of privilege is, and “all breaches of privilege are contempts of the House”. A breach of privilege is always contempt, and I'm going to give you a few examples.
There is deliberately misleading testimony. In 2003, the former privacy commissioner was found in contempt of the House for providing deliberately misleading testimony during hearings of the OGGO standing committee. Is deliberately misleading testimony your accusation? I haven't heard it. If you're going to make an accusation of breach of privilege, make sure it's consistent with what a breach of privilege actually is.
In 2008, deputy RCMP commissioner Barbara George was found in contempt of the House for providing misleading testimony during the Standing Committee on Public Accounts' hearings on allegations of mishandling of the RCMP's pension and insurance plans.
We also know that impeding access to the House is a breach of our privilege. Denial of access and significant delays experienced by members of the House constitute contempts of the House. That's nowhere near where we are at the moment.
Another is refusal to attend in the face of a summons. In 2013, the RCMP failed to allow a witness to appear before a Senate committee that was investigating harassment in the RCMP. That was found to be a breach of privilege, and rightly so. It was refusing or failing to attend, or in that case, impeding the ability of a witness to attend.
I could run down a longer list. The United Kingdom, on parliamentary privilege, has a list of contempts here:
assaulting, threatening, obstructing or intimidating a Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties;
deliberately attempting to mislead the House or a committee—
I mentioned this. It continues:
deliberately publishing a false or misleading report of the proceedings of the House....
removing, without authority, papers belonging to the House;
falsifying or altering any papers belonging to the House;
deliberately altering, suppressing, concealing—