Mr. Speaker, it was a little hard to go through all of this and to assume that it would work. I am sure that Your Honour probably has difficulty in that regard as well.
Mr. Speaker, on one hand we hear the hon. member say that he as a way of defence is accusing the chairman of the committee for having used an improper procedure and that is tantamount to his justification for the act he has committed.
Regardless of what occurred, that is not justification for his own behaviour. If the proper motion was not adopted by the committee for the committee to go into camera, that is a matter for the committee to discuss. The fact still remains that citation 877 of Beauchesne's still applies. It says very clearly:
No act done at any committee should be divulged before it has been reported to the House. Upon this principle the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, on April 21, 1937, resolved “That the evidence taken by any select committee—
That is the equivalent of a standing committee in the British House.
—of this House and the documents presented to such committee and which have not been reported to the House, ought not to be published by any member of such committee or by any other person”.
Not only was the document published and circulated by the hon. member, but the chair of the committee informed the House and provided both the chair and the table with written proof of a press release in which the member for Lakeland was actually advertising the fact that he was committing this act. I read further where it says:
The publication of proceedings of committees conducted with closed doors or of reports of committees before they are available to Members will, however, constitute a breach of privilege.
It does not say “and”. It says “or”.
I believe that citation was read into the record when I was in the House by the chair of the standing committee.
I do not know if the committee moved the appropriate motion to proceed to in camera or if the chair concluded that there was agreement to that effect and it was not challenged. Whichever way it was, the fact still remains that the committee was considering a report which of course was eventually going to be tabled in the House. Until it is tabled in the House, the relevant citation of Beauchesne's, 877, still applied. This was a premature disclosure.
The final argument we heard from the hon. member is that his disclosing this report was somehow immaterial. He says that the minister was not going to give the report consideration because the minister was already working on a draft of the bill. First, those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Second, it is immaterial. Whether or not the member believes that a minister would or would not have considered the report is not justification for a breach of the rules of parliament.
If I think we are going to win a vote tonight on supply or any other issue, would that justify me or anyone else in the House dispensing with having the vote because we firmly believe that based on our numbers that we would win it anyway? That is ridiculous. That kind of defence by the hon. member clearly does not work and I suggest that it will not wash with Your Honour.