Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster raised a point of order concerning the fact that he believed the international trade committee had exceeded its power in dealing with business before the committee . In your response to his point of order, Mr. Speaker, you pointed out that it dealt with matters that were dealt with by a committee, not by a chair making a unilateral decision to impose a rule. Therefore, you did not agree with his point of order.
However, I want to bring to your, Mr. Speaker, attention two new and additional concerns of which I believe you should be aware, and they concern this committee.
The first has to do with the fact that advertising was put forward. There was a listing for a televised hearing of the international trade committee, which yesterday or this morning was mysteriously and unilaterally cancelled, without notice and without any reason.
The committee did not make the decision to cancel the televised hearing. We do not know if it was the chair who unilaterally made that decision, or whether it was someone higher up at the ministerial level or the PMO. However, we believe this is a serious matter because the public relies upon televised hearings. They are advertised. They come to expect that it would be held for certain committees. Yet in this case, it was unilaterally cancelled.
Second, Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that this committee is now meeting without a break. Indeed, it sat through question period even though there were objections to that. I have never heard of a committee doing that. Usually there is a break during question period or for votes. Even if a majority of the committee members decided they wanted to do that, by doing so, they violated the privilege of one member, or any number of members, by preventing the member from coming to question period.
In fact, what has happened is the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, because he could not forfeit his right to deal with amendments clause by clause in that committee, had to forfeit his right to come to question period today. I find it astounding that this would be allowed to happen.
We would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider this. We believe his privilege has been violated. He cannot even be here in the House right now to raise this question with you himself because he is stuck in the committee and cannot get out.
We want to know why televised hearings, which have been listed, can be unilaterally cancelled? This is something that should concern us all. Why was the member's privilege violated and why was he prevented from attending question period?
We would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to look into this and to give us a ruling.