Madam Speaker, this has been a valuable debate. We are indebted to the hon. member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre for reminding us that when section 18 was inserted into the Constitution Act, 1867, it received in a legal sense British parliamentary privileges but it did not jell them once and for all in space and time.
These privileges are subject to creative reinterpretation according to new facts. In the spirit of what Lord Chancellor Sankey, the real person who gave us women in the Senate, the judge who decided the persons case, said that the Constitution was a living tree. This is true of parliamentary privileges.
In a sense we have had in the debate in the House two different possibilities presented. I was consulted several years ago by a member of the Senate in relation to whether the privilege extended to freedom from being served with legal processes in the House. It seems to me where a legal process serving is designed to humiliate or embarrass a member of parliament, or where it can certainly be served outside the House with convenience, that is an abuse of members' privileges. The member has power not merely to refuse it but the House has power to punish for contempt. I hope it would use that from time to time.
On the other hand, as we have noted today the judgment of judicial committee of the House of Lords has made a striking change in the law of immunities of heads of government. I have not been able to get the judgement as yet, the actual text, but it is saying basically that what one thought was unlimited in time is limited to the duration of the office.
Second, it may exclude certain types of acts that in an international law sense offend jus cogens. You could never get immunity, for example, for crimes against humanity. That is a rather astonishing breakthrough in international law, the more so because it was not perhaps generally anticipated as it should have been.
The British judges are now going in for progressive generic interpretation. In a similar way the immunities of diplomats, which have been considered absolute in the past, are usually by practice waived voluntarily by the ambassador or the head of the mission in the country concerned. That makes sense. It could be argued that either House has the ability collectively to waive a privilege if it felt that it was used abusively.
I think the constructive suggestion from this debate has been that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs might examine the question of updating the privileges. That was the suggestion of the member for Peterborough, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader.
I think it is a fruitful suggestion and it would be in the spirit of the proposal of the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre to have that adopted. He is right in saying these privileges were not frozen in the 17th century. They reflect their particular space and time dimension. New facts demand a re-examination. Let us have the re-examination but have it in an all party sense.
I have great confidence in Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I served on it in a sense; I cut my parliamentary teeth there. I think it would be a very fruitful suggestion which I hope the hon. member would accept.