Mr. Speaker, I would urge you not to be persuaded by the rather feeble argument offered by the government House leader that whatever happened in the last Parliament is somehow immune to your judgment or to the judgment of members of its appropriateness.
Is the government House leader actually saying you can do anything you like in the dying days of a Parliament because once the election is called there is no more privilege, there are no more rules and it is perfectly okay for a committee to vet its report with the government minister?
The argument that the minister is also a member of Parliament completely evades the point of this point of privilege. What should concern us all, if we are concerned at all about the independence of committees, is that government members on this committee vetted the report with the Minister of Industry and it was subsequently changed. This is an affront to our notion of how committees should work and how Parliament should work. It is something that the Chair should take very seriously.