Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify something in this debate. I want to begin by saying that I attended this morning's entire meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. I was there from 9 a.m. until the end. The chief government whip is trying to bet on public opinion. However, there are some facts that the chief government whip cannot deny. Among other things, in this House we have to abide by the Standing Orders. A chair, and even you, Mr. Speaker, in your position as Speaker of the House of Commons, cannot on his or her own initiative rule on a wide range of matters because those matters are included in, limited and governed by the Standing Orders. What happened in the Standing Committee on Official Languages is another illustration of this.
Today, this incident happened in the Standing Committee on Official Languages. As a whip, I have complained many times about the behaviour of certain chairs. I do not complain about the person specifically, but that the person filling the role of chair, who is part of the government, thinks he is above the rules. That is why we consistently ask the chair to verify regulatory and legal aspects with the committee clerk, who is not partisan. In most cases, our clerks are very qualified. They are the guardians and custodians of the rules that govern us in the House and in committee. Unfortunately, the chairs think they are above the rules and they ignore advice from the clerks.
Let us put things back in perspective. The government whip may attempt to stir a public opinion battle through the media, but there are facts that cannot be denied. These are undeniable facts. The chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages lost the support of the majority of members on the committee. What does that mean? What happens when the chair of a committee has lost the support of its members? Must we keep him on? Should we turn a blind eye? Do we sweep the dust under the rug, figuring that it was just a bad patch, and forget about it? I am sorry, but what happened at the Standing Committee on Official Languages was decided by the members of that committee, who felt that enough was enough and that this chair did not deserve the confidence of the committee.
Our Standing Orders are clear. Standing Order 106(2) states, and I quote:
At the commencement of every session and, if necessary, during the course of a session, each standing or special committee shall elect a Chair and two Vice-Chairs, of whom the Chair shall be a Member of the government party, the first Vice-Chair shall be a Member of the Official Opposition, and the second Vice-Chair shall be a Member of an opposition party other than the Official Opposition party.—
I will dispense with the rest of the standing order in question.
The chair having lost the confidence of the committee, a motion was put forward by the whip for the NDP. Members from the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois voted in support of the motion, and the member from the NDP also voted in support of his own motion. The Conservatives voted against it. How do the votes tally up? Because he is in government, the government whip would have wanted to disregard the outcome of the vote and say that, even though there were seven votes against four, the four won over the seven. I have never been good at math, but I would say, based on the law of numbers, that seven is more than four.
The situation of a minority government is special, but it looks as though the Conservative government has not yet understood that. In committee, as in this House, when the three opposition parties unite, the government cannot pass what it wants. This is the reality of a minority government. The committees are made up as follows: there are five Conservative MPs—including a chair, four Liberal MPs, two from the Bloc and one from the NDP. Which means that sometimes we vote seven to four. The opposition parties do not always have to stand together. Sometimes one opposition party votes with the government and it is defeated. Other times, one party finds itself alone with its own motion. This is the reality.
I will end by explaining that this morning we lost confidence in the chair and we tried to elect a new chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. We offered the position to four members of the Conservative Party: the member for Beauport—Limoilou, the member for Louis-Hébert and two other members whose riding names I have forgotten. They all refused.
This is understandable when the person is unable to accept. Did they refuse voluntarily or did they refuse as the result of instructions from the whip? The chief government whip—and he will recall—has already told me that, if we wanted to bring a chair down, all the others would refuse. So this is the situation we are in. All the others refused; the committee is not dissolved, but it is suspended.
As parliamentarians, we will have to decide what to do to clear the impasse. The chief government whip, however, had told me that this is what would happen. It was already written in the big book. What happened this morning was not a surprise. I therefore support the question of privilege tabled by the leader of the official opposition.