Mr. Speaker, while I thank my hon. colleague for his remarks, I believe he somehow misses the point of all of this. I think this motion has to be seen not as an aggressive act by the opposition but really as a reaffirmation of an age-old and very hard-fought right of parliamentary freedom. This freedom is required to ensure that all members are free to serve the needs of their constituents.
How are we to perform our duties without absolute freedom of speech? We cannot separate the two. If a lawsuit is brought against a member that somehow silences the member from speaking, then we are not able to perform our duties.
What we are trying to do here with this motion is uphold this tradition of parliamentary freedom. It is an absolute right. I would think that all of us in this House would want to fight for this to ensure that we maintain this right.
I would take exception to what my hon. colleague says and ask him if he would not in fact see the importance of this hard-fought right that we as parliamentarians have, this absolute freedom of speech, so that we can in fact serve our constituents. We are not serving our constituents if we cannot do that. I would ask if he could actually clarify that.