Mr. Speaker, I would like to intervene just briefly to add a few words to the question of privilege my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River put forward. I thank him for raising this issue.
Even though he rose on a point of personal privilege, it is a matter involving the privileges of all members of the House that may be infringed upon, not deliberately in any way by the Ethics Commissioner, but inadvertently by her ruling. In her ruling she points out that it may in fact be an unintended consequence of her ruling that some members may feel that their privileges were infringed upon by this, and I certainly do agree.
I would like to clarify the government House leader's point when he said that was not for you, Mr. Speaker, to usurp or undermine the jurisdiction of the procedure and House affairs committee. He said that was something that you should not do. The point is that given that the procedure and House affairs committee is unable to deal with the issue because it is logjammed, then it should be up to the House of Commons, not the Speaker, to get together and deal with the collective privileges of all MPs.
I predict and I caution that we might be facing an increased flurry of similar lawsuits that have the effect of silencing a member of Parliament and making that person unable to do his or her job. I do not belive we can allow that to go on. We could see such a flurry of lawsuits flying around here that we would think we were in a snow storm with slapp suits going every which way and silencing good members and making them unable to do their job.
The problem lies with the code of conduct for members of Parliament as it is interpreted by the Ethics Commissioner. We need to change the code of conduct to make it abundantly clear that a member of Parliament is not in a conflict of interest just because he or she is being sued.
We are not saying, as the government House leader would have us believe, that we are advocating that members of Parliament should never be sued if they say something libellous outside the House. No one is arguing that. It may well be that somebody could trip up and say something libellous that they should be sued for, but that does not mean they should be silenced for the entire duration of that lawsuit and barred from raising any of that subject matter in the House or in committee during the 18 months or 2 years that it takes for that lawsuit to trickle through the courts.
Mr. Speaker, as you are aware, I tried to move that motion at the ethics committee. I felt that it was such an urgent matter that we could not wait for the logjam in the procedure and House affairs committee to be cleared so we tried, knowing full well that we were outside our jurisdiction. The chair of the committee, the member for Mississauga South, actually ruled it out of order but we challenged the chair and we overrode his ruling. The majority of us on committee felt so strongly that our colleague from West Nova was being silenced by the interpretation of the Ethics Commissioner that it had to be dealt with at some committee.
However, that was not possible because you, Mr. Speaker, ruled that the committee could not deal with it. We have nowhere else to go but to appeal to you now to let the House deal with it. If the procedure and House affairs committee cannot, then the House of Commons should make it abundantly clear that no member of Parliament is in a conflict of interest just because they are being sued. Otherwise, we cannot do our jobs properly.