Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's enthusiasm for the rules and respect his right to present his views to the House but I have a couple of points. When I rose on a question of privilege, it was a privilege in the House not a privilege in committee, as he outlined for quite a long time.
The issue he discussed, which he quoted often, had to do with Standing Order 119, the subtitle of which is “Only members may vote or move motion” in a committee. It states:
Any Member of the House who is not a Member of a standing, special or legislative committee, may, unless the House or the committee concerned otherwise orders, take part in the public proceedings of the committee, but may not vote or move any motion, nor be part of any quorum.
I agree with that. That is a member of a committee sitting at the table with the committee members, participating in the committee proceedings.
What the member may have failed to recognize is that the minister came to the committee meeting not to be a member of the committee but rather to be a witness. There are two different roles here. One is a witness called by the committee and one is a member of the committee who will question the witness.
I would refer the member, which may be helpful to him, to O'Brien and Bosc, the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition 2009. On page 976, where it refers to committees, in the second paragraph it states:
This applies, as well, to parliamentarians belonging to other Canadian legislatures, because each of these assemblies, like the House of Commons, has the parliamentary privilege of controlling the attendance of its members...
There is no specific ruling governing voluntary appearances of members of the House of Commons before parliamentary committees. They may appear before a committee if they wish and, it states, have been invited. It says that members can appear voluntarily. They cannot be summonsed and cannot be compelled to appear but they can appear if they wish and have been invited.
The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development was not invited by the committee. Accordingly, the chair had no recourse but to not allow her to be a witness at the committee, and that was the decision that was taken. If the member wants to argue whether or not there was an invitation, that is fine, but there was not.
He referred to somehow censuring the minister and the chair deciding a matter of privilege. Mr. Speaker, as you well know, committee chairs have no authority whatsoever to censure any member for any action, nor do they have the right to determine on matters of personal privilege. Those matters come to the chamber and, if there is a problem at committee, a report must be given to the House so that it can be seen and it is the Speaker who will determine whether there is a case for censuring someone.
I appreciate the member's enthusiasm but if he had included those points, he would have found that most of the argument that he gave today was moot and not relevant to the point that I raised in terms of my personal privilege.
The final comments the member made in sort of a veiled threat about my being the chair and how I operate, I do not believe it is appropriate for an individual member to make comments on how he thinks another member is doing his or her job. It is not the member's position to judge, to make those allegations or to paint that picture of another member's work. It is unfortunate that he has done that and he may want to apologize for it but I will leave that up to him.