Mr. Speaker, I will begin by commenting on the initial words of the member for Scarborough—Rouge River. He said, “Oh my gosh”, we might actually have an impact on something out there, we would not want that to happen. I am being sarcastic, obviously, but there are things that we do want to have an impact on. We pass laws and they affect all kinds of things, the price of milk and the amount of money that seniors get in pension benefits and so on.
That is all good but as for having an impact on the proceedings of individual court cases, that is actually an area where we ought not to have an impact. That is the reason for the existence of the sub judice convention. In that regard, he must have just misunderstood what I was saying because he certainly would not want, I would think, to do that.
Basically, with regard to the observation made about the Parliament of Canada Act, it seems to me that he may be making the argument that his own rule could be illegal and could be struck down if it is found to exceed what the Parliament of Canada Act proposes. I do not know why he would want to propose a change to the Standing Orders, which might be found to be in violation of statute law, and therefore result ultimately in some kind of court action that would have this struck down or read more narrowly, perhaps in the manner that I had suggested it be written in the first place.