Mr. Speaker, I should bring to your attention that this, by virtue of this incident that appears to be going the way of the PC Party, sets a precedent. It sets a precedent for any other agreement that has ever been made by the House leaders that is not carved in stone or written on paper.
As you know, the common process is that House leaders gather and reach an agreement. It is an honourable agreement that people are expected to abide with. From now and forever, for any agreement that was arrived at in a so-called honourable fashion by the House leaders, any party in the House could subsequently down the road say that it never really agreed to that and therefore it wants to have something happen that it prefers. No matter how we try to debate that, there will always be this precedent that we are talking about today.
What about the seating plan? That is something that we arrive at by general agreement. We do not sign a paper and say that this is the way the seating plan will go. We could very well stand up sometime during the day and say that the official opposition House leader never agreed to the seating plan, that we want the whole seating plan revisited and maybe we will agree on it and maybe we will not.
You have to understand the precedent that is set here. While members of the House are expected to be honourable in all things, it appears that when that honour does not serve their purpose they will have the opportunity, because of this precedent, to say that they never really did agree to that or that the agreement is off.
I need you to consider this and understand the very dangerous path that we could be going down in the House. It will place in jeopardy every future agreement that the House leaders make. They will be in severe jeopardy and that must not happen otherwise the House will simply become dysfunctional, more so than it is at times.