Mr. Speaker, during such a serious debate, one of such grave importance, I was surprised to hear language befitting back street brawls.
I was also surprised to hear, in this House, statements that trivialized, minimized, and ran down the approach the Bloc Quebecois has undertaken today.
Before I get to the heart of the issue, I would like to make a brief aside. I heard the member for Mississauga West say that his constituents are fed up with this issue, that they do not want to hear one more word about the Constitution and Quebec's place within or outside Canada.
Very few countries in the world can say that one of their original constituents, a province, a founding nation was and still is excluded from a constitutional reform, which, in this case, took place in 1982. Few countries in the world can boast of such a sorry record, a sorry performance: deliberately excluding from and keeping out of their Constitution an entire people, a founding people of this country, a founding province of the Canadian federation.
That being said, I want to go back to the heart of the debate. This morning, I heard an hon. member say “Mr. Speaker, we are here to determine whether or not you should lose your job”. As if the only thing at stake here was the job of one individual, namely yourself, Mr. Speaker, as the Speaker of the House of Commons.
We have heard that it is the responsibility of the Speaker of the House to take decisions and the responsibility of members to abide by those decisions. During the course of almost seven years that we have been sitting here in this House, Mr. Speaker, you have made decisions that were sometimes in our favour, and sometimes not.
We have always accepted your decisions, as it is our duty to do, because we have always had great confidence in you and in the institution that you represent as the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Some members, like the hon. member for Mississauga—West, have tried to make a direct connection between this motion of non-confidence in the Speaker and Bill C-20. I think that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois has clearly stated—obviously the hon. member for Mississauga—West was not listening when he made his speech this morning and therefore did not hear this—that no such connection can be made between Bill C-20 and the non-confidence motion we are currently debating, because, had you ruled that there was a prima facie case of privilege with respect to the amendments—I will come back to that later—and had consequently heard or allowed the hon. member for Rimouski—Mitis to move her motion, the issue would now be before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
Long before Bill C-20 was passed, this issue could have been referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and today we would not be debating this motion of non-confidence in the Speaker. Therefore those who see things in a negative way and try to imply there is a link between this non-confidence motion and debate on Bill C-20 are mistaken.
What we are referring to is the fact that the Bloc Quebecois prepared a number of amendments, with the help of legislative counsel, in preparation for the report stage, gave rise to this interpretation, because some seemed to think that it was way too many amendments for a bill with only three clauses.
This is not just a bill containing three clauses, it is a bill that goes to the heart of democracy in Quebec, that deals with the very existence of Quebec whether inside or outside Canada, or even with the future of any other province since the government wants us to believe it applies to all the Canadian provinces, and involves the future of any province either inside or outside Canada.
It is not just a bill with three clauses; it is a fundamental bill, probably one of the most fundamental bills we will have had to vote on in this House. Yet the government rammed it through the House, rushing through every stage. Not one stage was disposed of in a normal and reasonable length of time. We rushed through every single one of them.
Closure was imposed at second reading. They wanted to impose closure in committee to limit work. Since they were not able to do so, they imposed closure in the House, at report stage and at third reading. Double closure was imposed.
As I was going to say, it just happened that for this bill we drafted a number of amendments with the help of legislative counsel and we moved a number of those amendments. Surprisingly, we realized that two of the amendments drafted with legislative counsel yet never moved had been ruled out of order. What a shock.
There was a second surprise: a number of other amendments that we had moved were ruled out of order based upon technical criteria. For example, the bill referred to secession, so the word sovereignty was beyond its scope. We went back to work and replaced the word sovereignty by the word secession just to please the Liberal government and, surprise, surprise, these amendments were again rejected.
Members will understand that we wondered about the impartiality with which we were treated with during the whole process. We wondered about the confidentiality that must exist between the members of parliament and legislative counsel. We thought that it was so important that we raised a question of privilege. Why? Because we were convinced that there had been a breach of confidentiality.
We learned that this administrative change had been made about three years ago by the officers of the House. As a member of the House, I had not been made aware of that. Moreover, I am also a member of the Board of Internal Economy, and even though I do not usually miss a lot of board meetings, I never heard about the fact that this client-lawyer privileged relationship, this relationship of confidentiality between legislative counsel and members, had been changed, that someone somewhere had decided that legislative counsel would be required to share their knowledge of amendments with the clerks.
I must tell you that this is hard to swallow because it shows that there is a double standard in the House. When the government puts amendments on the Order Paper, does it submit them to the clerks beforehand? Of course not. Why then should the amendments prepared by members of the House with the legislative counsel be shared with the clerks? Why has the client-lawyer type relationship of confidentiality between members and legislative counsel been broken? We do not know.
What we do know, however, is that when we raised this question of privilege in the House, the Chair considered it. You then said, and I will quote you directly:
I am unable to find that this constitutes a prima facie question of privilege or a contempt of the House.
You continued by saying:
Hon. members should understand that House legislative counsel do not work in isolation. There is no separate database for legislative counsel as the hon. member suggests. The legislative database supports the work of all persons having duties within the field of legislative support operations.
I revert to my question. How is it that the government can put amendments in the Notice Paper without having to share the knowledge of these amendments with the clerks? I wonder how things worked here before this administrative change, which, as a member of parliament and a member of the Board of Internal Economy, I had never heard about, except a few days before all these incidents occurred, was implemented and even before—to go further—computers began to be used in the House, even before legislative counsel could put draft amendments into databases.
Am I to understand from your ruling that, at one time, clerks would sneak into the legislative counsel's offices, open their filing cabinet, go through their files to see what they contained, which amendments had been prepared, for whom and for what purpose?
It seems to me that, except for the desire to speed up their work and make it easier during the night after we submitted our amendments, nothing can justify that a clerk should consult the legislative counsel's databank to avoid inputting all the information once more, reprint and reformat everything, to make an end of it. That's it, that's all.
This certainly makes the work of the clerks easier, but in the past, when everything had to be done manually, how far did the clerks go to make their work easier? Did they go as far as to search through the legislative counsel's filing cabinets?
I am told that this change was made just three years ago. Therefore, you cannot suggest that it has always been done in the past.
When something as fundamental as the trust that should exist between each hon. member and a legislative counsel is breached, there is something more important, more serious, and with more far-reaching consequences at stake than a simple decision by the Chair with which we should comply.
Through your decision, you have somehow validated a practice, and that prompted us to raise the question of privilege. Mr. Speaker, for reasons I have a hard time understanding, you have decided that there was not a prima facie case that the privileges of members of Parliament had been breached, when we were deeply convinced that there was a case.
We thought we had clearly demonstrated that the trust, the confidentiality that must exist in the relationship between the hon. members and the legislative counsels, had been breached. Instead, in your ruling, a ruling that really shocked us, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, you validated this new administrative process.
If we cannot be sure anymore that the work we do with the legislative counsels will not be used for other purposes, surely you can understand that we seriously question the system. We are questioning it because we are there are other bills before the House, and we are working on a number of amendments regarding them.
We have heard the government House leader make a statement to the effect that, in light of what was happening with Bill C-20 and with Bill C-3 coming up for consideration, the government better take action. That is why he introduced his infamous Motion No. 8. Forced to backtrack on that motion, he has now placed Motion No. 9 on the Order Paper. He is taking precautions, in anticipation of what will happen with Bill C-3.
How can the government House leader claim to know what is going to happen?
Considering the events of the last days and weeks, the situation with the two amendments of the Bloc and also what happened with the other amendments declared out of order after we changed them, you will understand that it was rather disturbing to hear the government House leader say that he knew what was coming.
How can he know that? How could he know what was coming unless someone somewhere informed him?
The relationship of trust has been breached. Mr. Speaker, the ruling you made on the question of privilege by my colleague from Rimouski—Mitis is not just a ruling like any other. I want to tell you right away that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois was heart broken at having to move a motion of non-confidence in the Speaker.
You know me well enough to know that I have profound respect for you and your office. You know that I respect you and your office. You also know that, if we are debating this motion today it is not, contrary to what the hon. member for Mississauga West said so outrageously, to satisfy some political agenda. That is not the object of the exercise.
It is unworthy of the hon. member to try to reduce what is now happening to a single manoeuvre or ploy by the Bloc Quebecois because we are exasperated by our failure to defeat Bill C-20. That is not what we are doing today.
There is a saying that if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. I repeat that if you had simply allowed my hon. colleague from Rimouski—Mitis to move her motion, allowed it to be debated, we would have long ago stopped talking about this question, except in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs where it would have been considered. This matter deserves due consideration. When you decided not to accept it, you brushed it off, and a fundamental relationship, a relationship of trust was definitively breached.
It might not be too late, but I want you to know that, contrary to what some might say, now it is not a question of whether we want to get rid of you or not. Because of the ruling, because of what has taken place, something very alarming, I am concerned by what the leader of the government said. He said “We knew what was coming”. But how can he know what is coming? You see, the relationship of trust has been breached.
We did not have any other choice, and I must tell you that we were heartbroken to have to introduce this non-confidence motion. I would like to think that before the end of the day, something will happen that will allow us not to vote on it, otherwise my colleagues and myself will have no choice but to stand up in this House and vote for this motion. It would be a very hard thing to do, but there would be no other choice.
