Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his intervention, but I would submit that there certainly has been no breach of confidentiality here, and therefore there should be no question of privilege found.
Let me point out that this bill was not leaked to the media. In fact the Minister of Justice held a news conference, that is true, and he gave an overarching viewpoint of the bill, but he did not go into specific details of the bill itself. That is a key point.
I would point to a previous ruling on March 15, 2001 by the Speaker, who ruled on a question of privilege concerning the fact that the media was briefed on a bill before members of Parliament. I will quote from that ruling:
To deny to members information concerning business that is about to come before the House, while at the same time providing such information to the media that will likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation that the Chair cannot condone.
However, that was certainly not the case with Bill C-52. In fact I would submit, as my hon. friend obviously knows, the members of Parliament were given an advantage over the media.
Bill C-52 was introduced yesterday. It will be called for debate today. In fact, since the government recognized, because of the shortness of time, that we did not want to have the opposition members unaware of the contents of the bill, we gave an embargoed copy of the bill to all of the opposition parties yesterday so they would be able to discuss it in detail at their own national caucus meetings. In other words, we gave them ample opportunity to study the bill before we debated it.
I would point out that they had the opportunity to study the bill before the Minister of Justice made his comments to the media.
Once again, there is no case whatsoever for a question of privilege. I would also point out the obvious, as the Speaker very well knows, that questions of privilege are only to be made if something actually impairs the ability of a member of Parliament to do his job. There is no impairment whatsoever in this case, because opposition parties had copies of the bill before any comments to the media were made.
Mr. Speaker, I know you will take this under your very wise consideration. I look for a response as quickly as possible.