Mr. Speaker, the issue we are discussing here now, and I know we all want to get back to the work we have come here to do this afternoon, is not what we are calling the flag issue. That matter has been taken under advisement by Mr. Speaker and by the House leaders. I am fairly sure we will end up with a resolution on that. For those members who want to push the flag issue or whatever, perhaps while our leadership in the House is dealing with this, this is not the most appropriate time to push the envelope.
I do not really want to talk about the flag here in the way it has been spoken of by some members. What I want to address is the point of privilege that has been raised by the House leader for the Progressive Conservative Party and it is a very important point of privilege.
At this point it is important for us all to realize that what has happened by this particular publication is that the office of the Speaker in which we place our trust, all of us as members, has been taken out of this place and taken out into the street. The office of the Speaker has been dealt with in a manner and in a way that the Speaker is unable by himself to deal with because of the nature of his office and the impartiality which he is called on to use and to exhibit as he works in this House.
Some of our colleagues have caused this to happen. Maybe they have been induced by aggressive journalists to make it happen. I will leave to colleagues the decision as to whether or not it should have happened, whether it was good or bad or right or wrong. But right now the member raising this matter of privilege has asked the Speaker to find that it is a matter of the privileges of this House, prima facie, and that he should take it under consideration and have the matter disposed of at the committee designated for that purpose.
Although all of us here will not be fully familiar with all the bits and pieces of the parliamentary privilege that goes in to making up the rules and the regime that I have tried to articulate here, I know that Mr. Speaker will have the full benefit of that in looking at this issue.
I submit that all you have to do today, and perhaps I make it sound like a simple question, is determine whether what has been alleged here today, which is generally not disputed, is sufficiently egregious vis-Ã -vis the privileges of the House to cause you to find that it is a prima facie breach of the privileges and to ask members to dispose of it.
I am not able to add my voice to whether it is or is not because the evidence is contained in a newspaper report and some of comments of members here.
I submit that is what we should be dealing with now. We should not be dealing with the broader matter of the so-called flag issue here.
The other minor comments that have come up that have caused members to react on both sides of the House I would hope could be dealt with very quickly so that we can allow Mr. Speaker to move on to the business of the House for the day.