Mr. Speaker, with regard to my hon. friend from Scarborough—Rouge River, in no way was I suggesting there was no foundation for your ruling in 2001. I simply indicated it was not covered, for example, in Marleau and Montpetit, the most recent edition of which was published in 2000. Unless they were clairvoyant, they could not have foreseen your ruling, which constituted a valid ruling in 2001, one year later. That in no way diminishes the basis for that ruling.
In fact, I was looking to that ruling as the authority that should guide us in this particular case. Of course, it is common, as my colleague indicated, for bills to be discussed. What is at issue is the specific content or text of the bill. That is what was called into question. In that particular case it was the text of the bill that had been released to the media, rather than to the House, in advance. The release of that text created the contempt of Parliament.
In terms of simply indicating that we are going to fix the bill, as I said, to say that I could not pass judgment or have any views on the existing system of accelerated parole because a bill was coming forward would be quite unreasonable. It is quite appropriate for us to say that there was a problem. To discuss the existing law could hardly be considered a contempt of Parliament. To indicate that we were going to bring in legislation to fix it was self-evident in the fact that it was put on notice. That is simply a statement of fact that is available to everyone. It was publicly on notice that a bill was coming forward to do that. This was the sum total of the announcement that was made and it cannot in any way be considered contempt.
Some media reports speculated on what the bill might do. Certainly that would be the case. Some members of the Bloc Québécois have been asking questions in the House, asking us to take action in that particular direction as well. It is reasonable for the media to speculate that perhaps it might see something like that in a bill. But that constitutes merely their speculation, their best guesses. As we see, the media is sometimes right and very often wrong.
However, in no way does that constitute a member of this Parliament, this House, this government having expressed such views in public or having expressed such views in private to any individuals. Doing so would have represented contempt had it occurred, had members disclosed the content of the bill to the media through a copy of the bill, but that was not done in this case.