I thank the members who have raised this point.
I also thank the hon. member for Joliette for his comments on this matter. I will consider all the arguments presented here today concerning the privileges of Parliament. I think that is what is important here. As all hon. members have pointed out, it is a privilege of the House to receive bills before they are published anywhere else. This is an age old privilege of our Parliament.
I will consider the arguments and come back to the House with a ruling in due course. I do not believe this impacts upon the debatability of this bill today. The bill has been introduced in the House. It was ordered for second reading. Whether or not it was disclosed in advance is, in my view, irrelevant to the consideration of the bill itself, but it may be something that affects the privileges of members and therefore, as suggested by the hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River, a committee might want to look into this if the Speaker finds there has been some breach of the House privileges. However, I will look into the matter and come back to the House.
As well, if the hon. member for Joliette has a copy of this bill marked “secret” that was distributed to anyone other than his leader in this House, I would be interested to receive a copy and see it. Perhaps I could contact the clerk about all of this.
That concludes the matter. We will now proceed with orders of the day.