I think we heard the deputy House leader of the party across saying that the opposition has the right to speak but that the other side of the House has less rights. I think we just heard the official position of that particular party in that regard.
Let us correct the inaccuracies made in the House earlier. First, as far as I know and the Minister of Justice knows at this point, the media did not receive a copy of the bill prior to introduction. The only people who received a copy of the bill before the introduction were opposition critics. They received a copy an hour and fifteen minutes ahead of time for courtesy reasons. The bill, as I said, was not released to anyone.
The Chair will know that embargo briefings are not something that were recently invented. Embargo briefings, without documents, have been held in the past on a number of issues. It is true that an embargo briefing was provided to the media earlier today. The information given to me was that no release of any document or any bill was given to anyone else. Any briefing given to the media was under embargo. No documents were given.
As I said previously, the opposition critics were provided a copy of the bill one hour and fifteen minutes ahead of the introduction. Even though the rules of the House, and the Speaker knows them far better than I, do not require that such is done but it was done any way.
I do not believe there was any attempt to breach anything. If anyone has breached the embargo, I am willing to look into that. If that means that in the future when people do breach embargoes that it should be recognized in the way things are done around here, then we would be willing to look at that as well.
However, that is not the same as to say that the Minister of Justice has committed an act of contempt or any other such issue against the House, nor does it mean that the hon. member across has a prima facie case of privilege against the House. That is a different proposition altogether.