Mr. Speaker, I move that the 21st report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, presented on Wednesday, December 15, 2004, be concurred in. As hon. members know, I have the honour of presiding this committee.
The matter that we were dealing with in the report in question was the question of privilege regarding the free movement of members within the parliamentary precinct. An event occurred, as we all remember, during the visit of President George W. Bush to Ottawa on November 30, 2004.
As we all know, at the time, the matter was brought to the attention of the House by one of our colleagues. I too reacted when it was brought to our attention that parliamentarians had been denied access to Parliament Hill, not at any odd time, not only while Parliament was in session—which is already a breach of our privileges—but more specifically on a day when the House was sitting, at times when Parliament was in session and when this House was to be sitting.
What was odd also was the very selective nature of the restrictions enforced. For example, there was the dean of this House, the hon. member for Winnipeg. I forget what his riding is called; it used to be called Winnipeg--Bird's Hill, but it has changed names since. He has been the MP for that riding for over 20 years. I apologize to my hon. colleague for forgetting the new name of his riding. I shall therefore refer to him as the hon. member for Winnipeg--Bird's Hill. He too had difficulty accessing Parliament Hill from the east side of Parliament.
My own office is located in the West Block and that morning I had to go to a parliamentary committee across the street, in the Wellington building. I stayed there for a while and then came back. At that location, restrictions were not very strict. It was rather easy to have access to Parliament.
Meanwhile, the hon. member for Winnipeg--Bird's Hill, who is not just anybody, since he is the dean of this House—of course, all members enjoy the same rights, but I think it was even symbolic in his case—was not able to access Parliament. There was this fence around Parliament that we are all familiar with. However, he had not even made it that far. It seems that he was not far from the Château Laurier Hotel, which is named after one of our great prime ministers, a Liberal Prime Minister. At that location he was told he could not go to Parliament. He and other parliamentarians replied that they were members of Parliament and that they had the right to go to Parliament. A Toronto police officer told them that it did not matter who they were, and he prevented them from going any further. I did not know that the rights of a Toronto police officer took precedence over those of parliamentarians. But we found this out on that day, at least based on the opinion of that member of the security forces. I am not saying this to marginalize the role of security forces, but at some point some authorities had a serious oversight when they forgot to explain to security officers their role on Parliament Hill, which was to protect parliamentarians. That part of the briefing was probably forgotten.
Still, the member and the other parliamentarians mentioned that the briefing was inadequate and that he should ask someone else or call his superior, and so on. Finally, a superior arrived and allowed the member and his parliamentary colleagues to pass.
Now, imagine that, if you will. The member was denied access to Parliament and had to become exceedingly angry before being allowed to pass. Once within the precinct, he realized there were hundreds of demonstrators. Parliament Hill was therefore off limits to members, but open to people demonstrating against President Bush, alleging that he was a terrorist, or I don't know what, with all sorts of offensive placards in front of Parliament, while the parliamentarians were denied access.
Now I remember the name of the member's riding, it is Elmwood—Transcona.
The member for Elmwood—Transcona, the dean of this House, had a hard time comprehending all that, and he is not alone.
The matter was discussed in the House. There was a motion, identifying the matter as one of privilege, on the face of it. The entire matter was referred to the parliamentary committee it is my honour to chair.
We found some rather puzzling things in committee. For instance, it was not obvious to anyone in security that the member of Parliament identification badge was recognized by the authority, with the exception of Parliament Hill security and the RCMP provided they were the usual RCMP people who took care of the Hill. They are familiar with the button which most MPs wear and should wear in this chamber. The button is the instrument by which we identify ourselves. It is not foolproof, but it jogs the memory of a security agent indicating that the individual is a member of Parliament. The other place has a similar button but it is a different colour.
We also have an MP identification card, a security pass, on which our photo appears and which is duly signed by our Speaker. I believe some colleagues presented it to police officers, but the officers did not know what it was. The police officers in charge of security did not know what the security badge was let alone check to see if that badge was in conformity with the norm. That was the difficulty with which our committee had to deal.
I do not think there was bad faith on the part of anyone, but there was some sloppiness in terms of how this was administered. We live in a democracy which we cherish and we want it to continue. My colleagues on this side of the House want this Parliament to continue functioning for a long time as do just about all Canadians, certainly the ones I spoke to recently. Canadians want us here and do not want an election called just because the Leader of the Opposition rented his campaign bus or whatever he did over the weekend.
However, getting back to the issue of the report, the protection of the right of members having access to this place is one of the fundamental principles of this great institution. The earliest example we could find of this protection being asserted goes back to 1733 in the British House. There is probably another example earlier than that.
The principle that is commonly referred to is that members have access to the House free of molestation, the term described in Erskine May. It is a very important principle without which we could not function. For instance, all members of Parliament are free to come here and vote confidence in this excellent government, if I could use this as an example. If someone were to stop an MP from coming here, or in some way forced him or her to make a particular decision in that regard, that would be molestation of a member of Parliament. It is contempt of Parliament for anyone to engage in that kind of activity.
That is why we have produced this report. This privilege is sacrosanct and needs to be protected. Members of the committee were quite virulent in expressing that.
Another more recent case was brought to our attention involving an incident on May 15, 1970. I do not want to take up too much of the House's attention with this, but I think it should be stated.
You may recall that an hon. member complained at the time, in 1970, that the RCMP had prevented MPs from entering Centre Block on the eve of the visit by the Israeli foreign minister. We know that security is tight when foreign dignitaries are here, as was the case during the visit by President Bush, and is also the case when dignitaries come from certain countries where security is much higher than elsewhere. The United States and Israel are two examples, but there are others. It is a shame it has to be that way, but we agree. Such is the case.
On May 25, 1970, a long time ago, the Speaker, the late hon. Lucien Lamoureux, had decided that the right of MPs to enter the Parliament buildings free of molestation had always been a respected privilege. Hon. Lucien Lamoureux said:
This principle should be recognized even if there is some question as to the extension of the term “parliamentary precincts”, and in particular whether the jurisdiction of the Speaker ... extends beyond the limits of the Parliament buildings themselves.
In other words, we cannot say that this was an attempt to deny access to an MP outside the parliamentary precinct and that, therefore, this did not count. At one time, the hon. Lucien Lamoureux was the MP for Stormont—Dundas. I see the member for Stormont—Dundas—Charlottenburgh now. No doubt he, like me, is inspired by the hon. Lucien Lamoureux, who did such an excellent job as the MP for Stormont—Dundas. I want to come back to that ruling by the hon. Lucien Lamoureux. It was clear in his mind that parliamentarians, whether inside or outside the parliamentary precinct, could not be denied access to Parliament.
As a result, our committee took this matter under consideration. We heard from numerous witnesses, who appeared before us to talk about parliamentary privilege. Of course, our staff and our clerk assisted us. Many others made representations to us. We heard from police authorities, and it became clear that there had been a serious lack of communication between said police authorities.
However, no matter how we cut it, someone telling the dean of Parliament, “I am from Toronto and you are not going by here”, does not exactly meet the threshold of subverting what are the rights of members of this House.
In any case, I conclude by reminding the House of the recommendations and the findings of our committee. Our committee said this:
The Committee finds that the privileges of the House of Commons and its Members were breached on November 30, 2004 by the security precautions established for the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush. The denial of access, and significant delays, experienced by Members of the House constitute a contempt of the House.
This is very serious.
The committee is of the opinion that the various police forces and security services involved must take corrective measures immediately to prevent this from ever happening again. For example, I hope that the Board of Internal Economy will write to the police forces asking what steps they have taken to ensure that this never happens again, in accordance with our conclusions.
I will read on:
The Committee further recommends that the Sergeant-at-Arms and the RCMP provide written reports to the Committee by the end of February 2005 outlining the specific measures that will be taken to prevent this situation from arising in the future.
If the Speaker has received a copy of that document, it would be appreciated if he could share it with the committee I have the honour of chairing. After all, we want to know what actions have been taken. Furthermore, if this has not yet been done and if the RCMP and other forces have not yet taken specific measures, I hope that they will be contacted shortly asking them to do so as soon as possible.
Those were the recommendations we made when this incident occurred.
In conclusion, we said in our committee:
The Committee recommends to the Speaker and the Board of Internal Economy that as a matter of urgency it enter into discussions to merge the House of Commons and Senate security services into a unified parliamentary security service for by January 1st, 2006.
Some would argue this is a little off topic in a way. The difficulty that parliamentarians experienced here was not with the House security nor with the Senate security. I would not want anyone to think that was the case.
In any case, I think some on the other side are urging us to move to orders of the day. I seem to be hearing that on their part. Maybe that is what they want to do and perhaps the House leader could tell us if that is the case. I thought there was another motion to concur in a committee report. That was explained to us by the House leader of the official opposition so it is perfectly in order to raise the report. Because it has to do with a question of privilege, it is important that we do so now.
In any case, getting back to parliamentary security, I have worked on Parliament Hill for a very long time. As many people will know, I started here almost 39 years ago. We have always had the two security staffs on the Hill. I would be the first to admit that we need to unite both security staffs under one central authority. We have done so with a number of other services which are far less crucial. For example, we do not have a Senate parliamentary restaurant. We have an institution for both. We do not have two separate libraries. We have unified those services and it is to the better functioning of Parliament. Therefore, I am all in favour of doing that. On this issue the threshold is even higher but because it is, it is also a little touchy for some people.
I wish I could say more about this and perhaps during question and comments I will do so.
