Mr. Speaker, I want to support the comments that have been made which came from three different parties basically.
The real question is how many times is this really going to go on. I want to remind you, Mr. Speaker, of your own words in this House. I am going to spend a little bit of time on this because there is a certain amount of frustration gathering among many members in this House on these types of decisions.
Mr. Speaker, I want to remind you of your own words on November 6. You said that this dismissive view repeated often enough makes a mockery of our parliamentary conventions and practices. You concluded by saying that you trusted that your decision at that early stage of this parliament would not be forgotten by ministers and their officials and that the departments and agencies will be guided by that.
I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, to determine how often is often enough in this House. Are you not as offended as we are that parliament is mocked in this way time and time again? This is at least the third time in this parliament that this has come up. My colleagues and I are getting a little tired of quoting these words because we are beginning to wonder if they mean anything at all to the government. After all, that is what we are all here for. Our words must count for something.
Having said that, I recognize that without the authority of this House, your words, Mr. Speaker, really do not have authority do they? Without our support the Speaker's power and authority are limited. I do not think we should let our institution and our Speaker twist in the wind on this issue any longer. I say let us back up the words of our Speaker this time with some teeth. Let us show those teeth and if necessary, let us bite a few bureaucrats and ministers with those teeth.
The last time I addressed this issue I quoted from Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada , page 221 and I wish to do so again. It describes a prima facie case of privilege in the parliamentary sense as one where the evidence on its face as outlined by the member is sufficiently strong for the House to be asked to debate the matter and to send it to a committee to investigate whether the privileges of the House have been breached or contempt has occurred.
I believe that the case brought forward by the member for Prince George—Peace River on February 3 represented another incremental affront on the House and the case for a prima facie contempt of parliament against the ministers and their departments had reached a flash point at that time. If the situation had reached a flash point on February 3, it caught fire on February 26 in the House when the member for Calgary—Nose Hill brought up another complaint regarding the millennium fund. Today if we do not take action we are at risk of being burnt to the ground and the mace melted into a pane of brass. The cabinet and its bureaucrats will have won and the members of this place will have lost the final battle.
Mr. Speaker, I sincerely urge you to allow the member to move his motion so we can end this mockery of parliament. This cannot go on any longer. If it continues to go like this, we will be up time and time again in the House. At some point the Speaker has got to put some teeth into this issue.