Mr. Speaker, I just have a couple of comments. I believe we are getting into a bit of debate here which is not around the privilege issue.
There are a couple of points I would like to answer which the government House leader brought to our attention. One is that although we can indeed question the minister any time he is in the House, the difficulty is that if someone feels there is a question of privilege we must raise it at the earliest possible moment. The government House leader knows that this is the earliest possible moment. I think it is appropriate that it is brought forward now and I await your decision on it, Mr. Speaker.
There is nothing inappropriate about bringing it forward now. If we had waited—who knows when the minister might be here—two or three days to bring it forward it would be out of order just because of lateness. I think it is entirely in order to bring it forward.
This is somewhat different from most ministerial announcements because it potentially deals with the privileges of members. We see in the newspaper articles today that it may affect the location of members' offices, especially those of backbenchers. It may affect access to which buildings are to be used by committees and so on.
This raises the concern level of backbench MPs. Some members might say that the last time they talked to their representatives on the board they thought there was to be another way of handling the issue of who looks after the precincts of the Hill, who will be giving directions to the architects and who will be overseeing the minister's works so that it is not just a public works project or indeed renovations, work and costs riding herd on the availability of computer services and all that sort of thing. Who is looking after it on behalf of members of parliament? It is certainly not the minister. It is the board. Perhaps there should be an oversight committee of parliamentarians.
Just as a final point, I remind the Speaker that on other occasions when things are announced in the press I believe the Speaker has already ruled that it is a trend we must be concerned with. It is not just one incident in and of itself. It is kind of like language in question period. It is not just the one incident. It is what happens over the course of time. Backbench MPs may ask whether they are really relevant, whether they are important or whether parliament is important.
I argue that this case is another one of a trend of ministers making statements that affect members of parliament. Then we read about it in the papers and we do not have input. It is a concern because of a trend, not just the one isolated incident.