Mr. Speaker, I would like the consent of the House to submit to you a letter signed by 81 of your colleagues. It concerns what is believed to be a breach of privilege, in connection with what happened to the hon. member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca. As you may recall, Mr. Speaker, one of the bills introduced by the member was first deemed votable, and later declared non-votable.
Without revisiting the ruling you have made on this issue, we would like to submit this letter in which we indicate how concerned we are as parliamentarians. We are worried that the government is using its majority to take over for the subcommittee on private members' business.
Mr. Speaker, we have put our trust in you, and rightly so, because you have always stood for the rights of members of parliament. When you were elected as the Speaker of the House, you made a commitment to ensure that the rights of all parliamentarians would be upheld.
In this letter, which is a form of petition, we respectfully submit to you that, when a private member's bill deemed votable is not voted on, this is a breach of parliamentary privilege, and we are very concerned about that. All those who signed the letter and wish to submit it to you are afraid that an unfortunate precedent has been set.
We urge you, as guardian of our freedoms and spokesperson for all members of this House, to take remedial action.
The remedial action we are seeking is for our colleague from Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca to be allowed to introduce another bill, which would be deemed votable, as soon as possible, without committing to a deadline.
To conclude, Mr. Speaker, we have complete trust in your ability to defend our privileges, but if we were to learn that the government was using its majority to take over for the subcommittee on private members' business, not only would we consider this a breach of privilege but our confidence in the rules by which this House operates would be gravely shaken and undermined.