Mr. Speaker, my colleagues who spoke before me made presentations based on the facts surrounding what happened at the committee. I believe, however, that you should certainly take into account jurisprudence and parliamentary law when you are making your ruling.
Again, as I did last week for the question of privilege of our colleague, the hon. member for Mount Royal, I refer to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice 2nd Edition, O'Brien-Bosc. I see that the authors are at the table and I am sure they will agree with my interpretation of their work. In any case, even if the authors agree, it is you who must agree. It is you we must convince, Mr. Speaker.
I refer you to chapter 3, entitled, “Privileges and Immunities”, page 111 in particular. In the middle of that page there are references to other examples of obstruction, interference and intimidation. We talked about prima facie cases of privilege in the case of members of Parliament. In the case of the hon. member for Mount Royal, we mentioned the damaging of a member's reputation. In the case before us, we are talking about “the intimidation of Members and their staff and of witnesses before committees”.
In matters of parliamentary law, it is generally agreed that witnesses who appear before parliamentary committees enjoy the same immunity as members. They cannot be the subject of civil action or criminal prosecution for anything they say during their testimony. In order to ensure that the witnesses tell the truth, they must have some kind of protection.
I clearly remember being a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts when it was examining the sponsorship scandal. When Charles Guité—I cannot call him Chuck Guité, because I do not know him well enough and I do not respect him enough to call him Chuck—testified before us, he asked the senior law clerk of the House of Commons if he had full protection, because he knew that the outcome could be somewhat compromising for him.
I would like to call the attention of the House to another quotation, still from the same source, but this time I am quoting from page 114. Just below the two quotations, the paragraph states:
Just as prima facie cases of privilege have been found for the intimidation of Members and their staff, the intimidation of a committee witness has also been found to be a prima facie breach of privilege.
That refers to a crown corporation employee who was a victim of intimidation in 1992. The matter was found to be prima facie contempt by Speaker Fraser and referred by the House to the Standing Committee on House Management, as it was known at the time, for consideration. The committee is now known as the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I am the vice-chair, and you were once the chair of this committee before becoming Speaker of the House.
I will close with a quotation from the report of the Standing Committee on House Management. This is from page 115:
The protection of witnesses is a fundamental aspect of the privilege that extends to parliamentary proceedings and those persons who participate in them. It is well-established in the Parliament of Canada, as in the British Parliament, that witnesses before committees share the same privileges of freedom of speech as do Members. Witnesses before parliamentary committees are therefore automatically extended the same immunities from civil or criminal proceedings as Members for anything that they say before a committee. The protection of witnesses extends to threats made against them or intimidation with respect to their presentations before any parliamentary committee.
Mr. Speaker, I would refer you to footnote number 241, concerning a ruling by Speaker Fraser on February 18, 1993.
As my colleague from Saint-Jean said, I am certain that you will study the matter carefully, as you always do, taking into account the principles of parliamentary law that I have touched on.
These excerpts from O'Brien-Bosc support a favourable decision in the question of privilege raised by our NDP colleague.