Talk to Mr. Kinsella. He's threatening your guys. I am talking about here.
The question of privilege is resulting from an incident involving yesterday's election of the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance. The first vote for the chair of the committee was nullified because of a counting error by the committee clerk. Before the second vote was taken, the chief government whip approached our whip's staffer and uttered the following “We phoned R.J. and told him who we wanted. If one of your guys doesn't vote for Sue there will be consequences”.
This sort of goonish misconduct displayed by the chief government whip cannot be tolerated in any venue, let alone the Parliament of Canada. Page 84 of Marleau and Montpetit states:
Speakers have consistently upheld the right of the House to the services of its Members free from intimidation, obstruction and interference.
On September 19, 1973, Otto Jelinek, the member for High Park--Humber Valley, rose on a question of privilege claiming that an employee of the CBC, in telephone conversations with the member, had advised Mr. Jelinek to stop asking questions about television coverage of the Olympic games during question period or else it would be alleged that the member had a contract with CTV and it was a conflict of interest. Mr. Jelinek claimed it was an attempt to intimidate him. As the member did not know the name of the caller no specific charge could be made and therefore there was no prima facie question of privilege. While there was no prima facie case of privilege, Speaker Lamoureux had, and I quote him:
...no hesitation in reaffirming the principle that parliamentary privilege includes the right of a member to discharge his responsibilities as a member of the House free from threats or attempts at intimidation.
While the chief government whip may feel free to threaten and co-opt government members in such a way, I will not accept her threatening opposition members or their staff in such a way. This staffer works on behalf of the official opposition whip and performs valuable functions that could affect the votable status of opposition members. This intimidation occurred while our staffer was attempting to perform a parliamentary function on behalf of the opposition whip.
Parliament must send a clear message to all members by using its powers to condemn such conduct and call it contempt like it is.
Mr. Speaker, should you rule that there exists a prima facie question of privilege, I would be prepared to move the appropriate motion.