Mr. Speaker, listening to all the debate on both points of order only indicates why the motion for today and yesterday is so important for changing the rules of the House.
I would like to say to the government House leader that he is partially correct in his comments. We did discuss it at the House leaders meeting. There was a question put to him: would there be a briefing on this issue? He asked his staff member and said, “I am sure there will be and would you check into that?” The next I heard of it was like every other member, by e-mail at 4:56 p.m. yesterday.
The people who gave this briefing to opposition members, who are treated as second class members of Parliament in the House by certain departments of government, told the members who were there that they only heard about giving this briefing around three-thirty or four o'clock yesterday afternoon.
Therefore it was put together in a hurry. That is the government's privilege to do that. However the fact is the officials did not even know they would be giving the briefing until late in the day. If something is that important, I would have thought the minister's office could phone members' offices and say that it was happening at 8:30 in the morning.
My party happened to have a big dinner for its leader last night and most members were gone probably at the five o'clock time. Other members were in committee meetings. Their staff is gone when they get back to the office. This was a very important briefing. There should have been good notice given so that all members could have been there.
I would think that every member of Parliament, no matter on what side of the House they are, should be treated equally. I went through this when I was the critic for fisheries where we were hustled into a room with the public and the Liberal people were in another room. It is not the way parliamentarians should be treated, and it is a good reason why we have this modernization debate.
I hope you look into this issue, Mr.Speaker, and ensure that it does not happen again. Members deserve proper notice. We are all very busy when we are here. The government knows this. When it has bad news, it puts out press releases at five or six o'clock on a Friday afternoon because nobody will read them until a few days later.
Let us get something happening so that members are treated fairly and equitably and ensure sure they are informed properly.