Mr. Speaker, there are two matters.
First, I wish to state that, given the speech by the government House leader of a few minutes ago, which was melodramatic to say the least, it is not in any way our intention in this question of privilege to challenge the excellent work of all of the House of Commons staff. That is not the point.
Two questions were raised. The totally inappropriate imputing of motives by the government House leader in his speech just now notwithstanding, there are two issues.
We have a relationship of confidentiality with the legislative counsels. We worked with one of them in drafting a number of amendments. A number of the amendments we had prepared were tabled. I believe it to be the most basic of our privileges to select which ones to table and which not.
We noted something that gives us cause for concern. The government House leader said “They were not tabled, not selected, no problem”. The problem is that we now have doubts about the confidentiality of our relationship with the legislative counsels. It appears that the clerks, which ones I cannot say, used the legislative counsels' data base, which ought to be confidential. That is where the problem lies.
The other problem is that the Deputy Principal Clerk pointed out to us that a number of our amendments were rejected for technical reasons. He explained the technical reasons for the rejection of these amendments. We relied on what he said and not on the remarks of the legislative counsel, as the government House leader intimated. We relied on what the Deputy Principal Clerk had to say. We followed his recommendations. We reworked the amendments and resubmitted them and they were again rejected. It seems there is a bit of a problem.
I was listening to the government House leader and his remarks oddly enough made me think of those who justified barn burnings as a means to fight against the sovereignist movement. We have to wonder whether the end does not justify the means, in the case of those opposite.