Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleagues, all of whom have made comments on this issue.
In considering your ruling, Mr. Speaker, it is very important to try to consider the spirit and the motivation behind the issue with which we are dealing. I can assure you that my hon. colleague, my friend from Leeds—Grenville, in his statement, was quite accurate when he said that any information that might have been inadvertently given and later reported in a national publication was done not in the spirit of leaking deliberately to the media information that might be considered confidential, but was done quite innocently and in an “inadvertent” manner.
My colleague from Leeds—Grenville has also stood before the House and apologized to his colleagues on the committee, to the House and to you, Mr. Speaker, because there was no malice intended. There was no intention to deliberately leak information prior to the subcommittee reporting back to the committee.
Mr. Speaker, I think you will recognize that each of us in the House from time to time makes mistakes. I think it is important, however, to recognize whether or not the mistakes made were serious enough by the intent behind them to cause some consequences and discipline from you. I would suggest that in this case there was absolutely no intention of malice. There was no intention to deliberately leak information. This was an inadvertent mistake. My colleague has apologized and I would ask that you take that into consideration when considering this question of privilege.