Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's remarks and I want to remind the House and Canadians about the process that was followed.
Mr. Speaker, you referred this issue to the procedure and House affairs committee. You said it was a prima facie breach of privilege, which means on the surface it appeared there was a breach of privilege.
I had the honour and privilege of sitting on that committee during a constituency week when members should have been back in their ridings. We listened to some great input in committee. We heard from Mel Cappe, a number of ministers, and many other witnesses during the two days of hearings, and then a third day for another matter.
The problem is that the decisions of that committee, which should have been made after the input was received, were made long before the committee ever met. At the end, the committee was presented with the demands of the coalition opposition, one of which was that there would be a maximum of two pages in the report, two days of hearings and two pages in the report. It is unbelievable.
What is worse, the coalition demanded that there be no summary of evidence presented at the meetings to the House of Commons. We can talk about democracy and the contempt of parliamentary process, but I would ask my hon. colleague this question. If we do not provide information on the process that the procedure and House affairs committee went through for three days here in Ottawa, is it not a contempt of the parliamentary privilege of the members of the House?