Mr. Speaker, I will try to be very quick. I have a few points that I want to add to this discussion and to your further deliberation on this matter.
First of all, I would like to point out that it is more than a little bit ironic that the chair of the ethics committee suggests that it should be acceptable to bring forward a report back to the House outside of the mandate.
He fully admitted it and in fact ruled that way, that this report was outside of the mandate of his committee, but he uses as an excuse the fact that the procedure and House affairs committee currently is not sitting. He uses that as an excuse.
I would point out the irony in the situation. The procedure and House affairs committee is not sitting because, as he stated, the imposed hijacking by the government. The procedure and House affairs committee is currently not sitting because the tyranny of the majority at that committee ruled a sound ruling by the chair, the member of Parliament for Cambridge, out of order, and tried to overrule it and ultimately remove that chair from his position.
The government members on that committee are determined to support the member for Cambridge and his chairmanship. It was a sound ruling when he ruled against an investigation into what opposition members called the so-called in and out financing of the Conservative Party of Canada in the last election campaign. They wanted that committee to be seized with an investigation and the chair ruled that it was beyond the mandate of the committee.
That issue, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is before the courts. There is an ongoing dispute between the Conservative Party of Canada and Elections Canada on the interpretation of the election laws and the chair, the member for Cambridge, ruled that out of order.
Subsequently, the majority, made up of opposition members, overturned his ruling. It is exactly the same situation that happened to my hon. colleague, the member for Mississauga South, when he ruled something out of order and as he fully admits it is out of order, it is beyond the mandate.
So the very thing that you, Mr. Speaker, warned about in your ruling is coming about more and more often, that the tyranny of the majority is alive and well in committee. Sound judgment, sound rulings by the committee chairs are overturned by the majority because they do not like them for partisan political reasons.
There are other options. The member for Mississauga South asked what are the other options without the procedure and House affairs committee sitting? It is the rightful committee that should have dealt with this issue or should be dealing with it is perhaps a better term. A party could obviously bring forward an opposition motion and get a vote that way. There are votable opposition motions if this is really of such huge importance that we have to deal with it immediately. We could deal with it that way.
The member from Bathurst, a few moments ago, said that we need to find a solution. I agree with him that we need to find a solution. I think the solution is quite simple. When the chairs of committees make a sound procedural ruling that is supported by the clerk of the committee, the committee has to uphold and respect that ruling. That is not too difficult. That is what happened in the past. The solution is simple. All committees should follow the rules and respect the rules, the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. Then we will not have this problem.