Mr. Speaker, I am not surprised that the Conservative House leader has brought forward this pernicious motion today because it speaks to one of the fundamental dysfunctions of what has happened in this Parliament.
I sat on the procedure and House affairs committee for a period and I must say that I have never in my entire life sat in a more malignant and toxic environment than what was allowed to happen at that committee under the Conservative chair from Cambridge. He was often unilateral in cutting off microphones, cutting off debate and interfering with members whenever it suited him. However, when it came to irrelevant filibustering, obstructionism and a completely poisonous atmosphere by the Conservative members he turned it into a mockery.
What the Conservative Party is doing here is basically shutting down all the areas of committees where we are doing necessary work because it wants to control this Parliament from the BlackBerries and the war rooms of the PMO.
We are parliamentarians and we need to protect the right of the committees and the members of Parliament to undertake investigations, regardless of whether the little pointy heads in the war room want to reduce it down to black and white, one syllable or one slogan issues.
What we saw at the procedure and House affairs committee was an absolute disgrace. It was hour after hour, day after day, month after month of interfering and shutting down the work of Parliament. This committee is a very important committee.
The ethics committee is another committee that plays an important role in Parliament. We were attempting to examine at the procedure and House affairs committee the question of the potential illegality of the Conservatives election financing scheme. It is an ethical issue that should have been and could have been debated in the procedure and House affairs committee and yet the Conservatives took over that committee and ran it into the ground.
When the chair of the committee, the member for Cambridge, lost the confidence of the committee and the Conservatives brought in the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London, he refused to sit as the chair because he said that he did not know how. We are professionals here. We are here to do the legislative business of the country.
What we see is an undermining of the fundamental confidence of Parliament.
I appeal at this point on the issue of allowing the ethics committee to do its work and not be undermined by the continual filibustering and game playing by a party that is now attempting to portray itself as somehow a wounded minority.
The member said that there was a tradition of allowing reasonable length and delay tactics. Certainly, reasonable delaying tactics is a fundamental tool. However, when we see an entire committee shut down for an entire parliamentary session, that does not meet the test of reasonableness by any standard of imagination.
Mr. Speaker, if you were to look at the record of the ethics committee, I think you would see that the chair, who is well-respected, acted properly. The record will show the poisonous and pathetic game playing that went on. The chair made a ruling, not on partisan grounds, but on the fundamental issue of parliamentarians being able to do their work.
Mr. Speaker, when you rule on this, as you most certainly will do in a very judicious manner, you will be cognizant of the fundamental issue here. Is this a pattern of obstructionism and contempt for Parliament or is the committee actually trying to do the work of Parliament? That is where the decision needs to come down.
Mr. Speaker, if you look at the record from the ethics committee, you will clearly see that reasonable delaying lengths and reasonable debate were allowed, even when it was extended into contempt and interference. It went on for a fairly long period of time. Mr. Speaker, you have always recognized that committees are the masters of their own house. The chair had to make a ruling that it was time to move on.
I think what we are seeing from the Conservatives is that they are simply trying to walk the clock down on Parliament by throwing more interference into the work of Parliament. Mr. Speaker, I appeal to you to basically throw this out.