Mr. Speaker, as you know from the letter I deposited with your office just over an hour ago, I am rising on a question of privilege relating to an unfortunate incident that began this morning and has been continuing throughout the day.
I will, through the course of my remarks, ask you, Mr. Speaker, to rule in favour of my belief that there exists a prima facie case that my privileges as a member of Parliament have been breached.
For those watching at home or reviewing the Hansard, I will remind the House that Erskine May’s Treatise on The Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament defines privilege in the following way on page 75:
Parliamentary privilege is the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively…and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions....
Mr. Speaker, I beg your indulgence for a minute or two because, in order to get the proper context of what happened today, I am forced to step back and give an account of events leading up this morning.
As the international trade critic for the official opposition, I have been working to have Parliament study the recent Canada-China foreign investment protection agreement. This afternoon, for example, in the Standing Committee on International Trade, I will be moving that the committee undertake a study that would do just that.
Over 60,000 members of the Canadian public have written to the NDP asking that Parliament examine this trade policy and, in response, I suggested that these concerned citizens write directly to the members of the standing committee to ask them to support my motion. I also helped to facilitate them sending messages to the correct addresses.
Members of Parliament get this type of mass email regularly as a matter of course. All MPs have a publicly available email address, phone and fax numbers for this purpose, and letter box addresses, again for the very purpose of providing Canadians the channels through which they can communicate with their elected representatives. In fact, all Canadians are able to write to any member of Parliament without having to buy a stamp precisely so that we remove any impediment to making contact with MPs through the appropriate channels. It is part of the democratic process. It is healthy. I am proud to have encouraged so much engagement from the public through the appropriate channels available to all.
However, to the contrary, beginning this morning and throughout the day, I have been receiving thousands upon thousands of emails from the same email address, that of the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. He is forwarding me the messages of those thousands of concerned Canadians who are urging him to support my motion at committee. In other words, he is taking the emails sent to his public address and he is sending them to my personal email address as an MP.
The problem is that these messages are being sent to my personal email account, not the email address that is publicly available and, therefore, not the one meant as the appropriate channel to receive such a high volume of mail.
My personal email account is the one on which I rely to execute any number of tasks crucial to my work as an MP, as all MPs know. The effect was that my email account froze and I was unable to use my BlackBerry's email function or any email function of my personal account to carry out my duties as a duly elected member of Parliament. I am unable to send or receive and was unable to send or receive important communications to and from staff, constituents and colleagues.
Perhaps there was a day when the use of our BlackBerrys would not be considered an indispensable tool for our work but I would submit that in this day and age there is simply no question about the fact that it is.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge your agreement with my belief that this indispensable tool to which unhampered access is covered by the provision of O'Brien and Bosc House of Commons Procedure and Practice at page 89 where it lists the quote “freedom from obstruction” among the rights and privileges of all members of this House.
On page 83 of O'Brien and Bosc, the description is a bit more complete, where it reads, “...obstructing...a Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties” would constitute “contempt”.
At page 108, it states:
Members are entitled to go about their parliamentary business undisturbed.
Speakers have consistently upheld the right of the House to the services of its Members free from intimidation, obstruction and interference.
As Speaker Bosley noted in 1986:
Should an Hon. Member be able to say that something has happened which prevented him or her from performing functions, that....would be a case for the Chair to consider.
Mr. Speaker, you will no doubt be aware that there have been other questions of privilege raised on this type of obstruction where MPs' faxes and public email accounts are flooded to the point of dis-use and you may be tempted to dismiss my case based on those rulings.
For the record, I respect the decisions that have been made against such claims, including that of your immediate predecessor Speaker Milliken, who on June 8, 2005 ruled that the simple fact that emails and faxes were flooding public email accounts was not sufficient to rule that a prima facie breach of privilege existed.
In fact it was my own colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh and the current Deputy Speaker who so eloquently put it on February 28, 2012 that the intent of the inundation is the key question. He said, “The test is: What is the intent of the calls coming in, the emails coming in and the faxes coming in? Intent is the key component”. I agree with this assertion. Intent plays a key component in the determination of whether or not a breach of privilege has occurred.
In this case I submit that there could be no doubt that the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, or other staff for which he is responsible, knew that such an inundation of email messages to my personal account would have a damaging impact on my ability to carry out my duties as an MP, which constitutes a deliberate, malicious and frankly childish attack on me and my privileges as a member of Parliament.
In addition to being a technical breach of privilege on which you, Mr. Speaker, will rule, the illustration of the cynical approach of the member, and I dare say many of the members from the governing party, is being clearly displayed here.
I as a member of Parliament and critic for the official opposition asked Canadians to get involved in an issue of huge importance to me and, more important, to millions of Canadians. I asked them to engage in the process using the appropriate channels available to the public. It is beyond dispute that encouraging Canadians to contact their government to express their views is a positive and important function of democracy. I am pleased that the response was of such magnitude that the member opposite took note and felt compelled to act.
However, that member decided to take this civic engagement and proper use of resources of this Parliament and use the email messages of these thousands of Canadians as a tool to deliberately and malevolently undermine the ability of one of his colleagues to do his job as an MP. He could have sent those emails to my public account, as I directed Canadians to direct their views to his public account.
What the member did is improper. Directing the public to proper channels of communication with MPs is one thing, and again, the member could have done so to my public account. However, he chose not to do so, knowing that sending those thousands of emails to my personal account would inhibit my ability to discharge my functions as an MP.
The member should be embarrassed by his actions today. I hope he will apologize not only to the House for his behaviour but also to each of those Canadians whose good faith emails he used as a cynical tool to undermine democratic engagement and interfere with the rights of another MP to discharge his duties.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If you rule in my favour, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.