Mr. Speaker, when I heard him utter those forbidden words I remembered “Nyet. Sdez on ne govorut po russki”, but you allowed him the indulgence because oratory is so rare in this Chamber. We mumble our words and we perhaps are lulled to sleep by a monotonous cacophony of sounds, usually from the opposition, but sometimes even from this side.
The reminder of the 19th century drew me back to Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a household word for many people. Mr. Justice Holmes uttered the well known words upon businesses affected with the public interest.
I think we should perhaps examine the concept of rights of society, rights of individuals, rights of associations in a contemporary context.
What were the businesses affected with the public interest? Mr. Justice Holmes referred to people by these honourable professions: lock keepers; innkeepers. There is a distinction: people who conducted ferries; people who conducted rooming houses, not gaming houses; all of these objects. But the kernel of all this was that this was an area where state and the individual in society were in collision and rules and regulations were required. So I suppose one of the larger areas in which we could have benefited from northern Alberta's or northern Saskatchewan's learning was where to draw the line in these particular cases.
Businesses affected with the public interest have their own regime, their own regulations and certain privileges and immunities that the general public do not have. I suppose that is one of the issues for our society today, the growing public domain. Some would say it is too large. We think on this side of the House that we have the right balance. But nevertheless, are there privileges, are there immunities that ordinary citizens do not have? Is there, in that sense, an implied social contract to accept the continuance in work, even under conditions which would not be tolerated in a purely private domain?
It is a resolution that modern jurists, trained in the concept of balancing interests, balancing community interests, balancing individual interests, know that decisions can only be rendered in the context of specific cases. I think in this sense I would have preferred more argument on the other side of the House addressed to this issue.
I am getting this in letters and communications to me, and I have asked myself professionally, for example: Should teachers be allowed to strike? Should university professors be allowed to strike? Should nurses? Should doctors? Should people who perform essential services? I think we do need, in terms of defining a new social contract for the new millennium, to have an extended debate on issues such as this in the give and take to which this House is accustomed. I do not believe we have heard it tonight. I think that is a pity because an opportunity, at some length, has been lost.
I am reminded again of a point that was discussed with—can I say some heat—by the member for Elk Island and by members on his side of the House. It seems to me that some of the hon. members opposite were saying that they were barred from access to this House. None of us would attempt to bar the member for Elk Island from access to this House. That would be a formidable confrontation and we would certainly want to avoid it.
Nevertheless, in the 16th century the great preoccupation of parliamentarians was resisting people who tried to bar their access to parliament. It was the king and the king's courtiers and others, the commoner, rushing to the House who might never arrive.
In the Polish parliament it was said, because they had the strange concept of the liberum veto, that a single negative vote was enough to prevent any decision being made. The only thing to do was to apply the word that the member for Elk Island uttered so eloquently, nyet. However, before he could utter nyet and veto, they would lop off his head. The liberum veto, as late as the 18th century and the third partition of Poland, had its necessary corrective, the right to cut off heads. It is an old Polish custom, but I was reminded of it when I heard the eloquent speeches opposite of how members were barred from coming to parliament.
I once gave an opinion, free of charge I must say, to a member of the other house. Why do so many of us cast stones against that other house? I once visited the chambers, the rooms, the offices of members of the Senate and I saw those red carpets. Ours are green. The grass is green. When we visit the offices of the Senate we see that beautiful red plush velvet. I was overcome by a senator who embraced me and said “Somebody has committed a crime worse than death in relation to me”. I asked “What have they done?” The senator said “They tried to serve a process on a senator in the house”. Serving a process in the House, is that an impediment to the efficient conduct of a parliamentarian's work? Speakers of the House have been known to scribble notes during the hearings of the House. It has been observed. Is it an impediment to a member's or a senator's function to be served with a traffic ticket violation by a police officer?
I was appalled when I heard this. I empathized with the senator concerned, one of our most attractive senators. We discussed alternative, more moderate controls, to take a further step beyond Mr. Justice Holmes.
We do agree that senators are not above the law, that senators are subject to the principle of equality before the law. Senators should pay their traffic violation tickets too. But are they effectively to be immunized from this equality before the law because they cannot be served?
I think looking for a pragmatic resolution to this problem, Mr. Speaker, you would examine the issue: Are there alternative methods of service of summons?
The suggestion I made to the hon. senator was that she make herself available to be served in her residence or in her taxi coming to the Senate, but not in the Senate itself. The principle was an inviolate one. The House cannot be used for service of ordinary legal processes. A member cannot be arrested in the House. That is why I come back to the 16th century.
I sympathize with those who felt on a picket line that they were polite and maybe a member was not polite. Nevertheless, the inviolability established against an arbitrary king, a sovereign king who said “I am king and I am above the law”, was that he could not bar members from coming to parliament. When King James I said to Sir Edward Cook “You say I am subject to the law. Mr. Chief Justice, I am above the law. I am the source of sovereignty”, Chief Justice Cook replied in the eloquent phrase “Non sub homine sed sub Deo et lege”; not subject to God but subject to the law of the land. That is a very eloquent principle.
The member for Elk Island could well counsel his colleagues with the wisdom that comes from the accumulated experience in northern Saskatchewan. In those long winter nights he could say they are also subject to the law. The more moderate control in this case would be to advise the member for Elk Island's colleagues to step nimbly around those obstructing their passage. The alternative, more moderate control is that you can waltz around them. That is the way. The member for Elk Island would agree with me. He could exercise a skater's waltz around the obstruction.
If we have solved this problem of sanctity of parliament that members cannot be barred from coming to the Hill, it is worse now than the offences of the 16th century committed against parliament because then parliament had the remedy. It had its dungeons and it cast the miscreants into the dungeons. There is a case to be made for cleaning the dungeons, cleaning the Augean Stables. Let us have access to those dungeons. We can protect the member for Elk Island. We can protect his colleagues and his cohorts from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment on the way to the House. Bring back the dungeons.
It occurs to me that in considering this matter at this stage of the evening we have to study the old precedents. We have to reject, as the member for Elk Island would in his Ciceronian tones, the notion that all of the past is bad. We can learn from the past.
Mr. Speaker, you and I watched the Academy Awards two nights ago. We saw the resurrection of Queen Elizabeth in two personalities. We saw the past as beautiful. Life is beautiful. We do not expect the member for Elk Island to imitate La Vita é Bella and to dance on the backs of chairs. But we do expect from all members of the House respect for the past, respect for precedents, but in a very dynamic sense the interpretation of precedents in a creative way that responds to our expanding destiny for the new millennium. The time is with us. The new millennium is arriving.
To examine the dilemma of how to balance the conflicting interests in this period of rapid change, the societal interest, the individual interest, is the question. What is the answer? It calls for Solomonic judgment and the answers are to be found in those hidden valleys in northern Saskatchewan.
I ask the hon. member from the Trent University area, are there not hidden valleys in his original native land? There are parts of Wales that have not been visited since the Romans were there. People in these lost valleys have the virtues of yesterday. They have the old values. They have all the things that we depend on to build and maintain—