Yes. It would take us into mid-July and I think people want to get home.
I am asking the question of why he is taking up the time of Parliament in raising an absolutely irrelevant point? You know well, Mr. Speaker, that I am a great student of the rules of Parliament. The point of order has to be taken through the committee. It is not for him to cry to the principal that the teacher did something wrong in his classroom. The rules are very clear. They say:
Unlike the Speaker, the Chair of a committee does not have the power to censure disorder or decide questions of privilege. Should a Member wish to raise a question of privilege in committee, or should some event occur in committee which appears to be a breach of privilege or contempt, the Chair of the committee will recognize the Member and hear the question of privilege, or in the case of some incident, suggest that the committee deal with the matter.
This is to be dealt with by the committee and if the committee rules that there was an issue, the member quite rightly can bring it to the committee. Then it is brought to the Speaker and then the Speaker rules.
We have been seeing a bizarre filibuster in Parliament since 10 o'clock this morning where very important issues of parliamentary law have not been debated. The issue of nuclear liability, which the New Democratic Party is absolutely opposed to, has been completely shunted to the side. The bizarre airline safety bill, that the government has been trying to push through, has been shoved aside by the government and it has been bringing up irrelevant issues.
The question that we are dealing with is why the member is taking up the time of Parliament to cry foul over the government's filibustering techniques in a committee? Its track record has been that it basically shuts down committee after committee with the same kinds of shenanigans and, finally, a chair has to rule that there is a question of absolute irrelevancy in what it was speaking about.
I am sorry if his feelings were hurt, but this is the big boys' chamber. We are paid to be professionals, to stand and do our job. He knows full well, Mr. Speaker, that he cannot appeal to you to intervene. This is not the way Parliament works.
Perhaps there is a need for some parliamentary lessons over the summer. Maybe, through the wonderful clerk's office, members of Parliament could be offered, especially the Conservative backbenchers, a summer course where they could learn some of the basic rules of Parliament.
It is a very good thing for all of us to learn. As someone who is into his second term of Parliament, I found the clerks to have been excellent at being able to show us, so we do not stand in the House and embarrass ourselves or our constituents.
At the end of the day, what has happened in the House has been a bizarre and useless filibuster by the Conservatives, keeping important and very controversial bills from coming forward at the end of a session.
However, it also undermines our parliamentary role here because we are seeing attempts to create ad hoc rulings, to change the hundreds of years of tradition in terms of how things are reported through the committees and then to the Speaker, and then asking the Speaker to unilaterally override the committee tradition, especially on a point where the committee was trying to do the work of Parliament. That is what I have to keep getting back to. This committee finally said that enough was enough, that it had heard all the irrelevant banter of the party that fundamentally was an opposition party, and that it needed to get down to the work of Parliament.
Mr. Speaker, you know the rules and you respect the rules and I do not think you will be swayed by such a maudlin display as what we have just seen from the member from Edmonton.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage you and your staff to have a wonderful summer. I know my colleagues in the Bloc also want to wish you a wonderful summer because you do take the brunt of having to listen to many parliamentary debates that are--