Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time taken and the speech just given by my hon. colleague. I thought I would try to respond as well as I could on his two main points.
On the travel rules issue, with respect to the idea that travel for parliamentary business that is only directly and clearly connected to parliamentary business is already covered by the current Senate rules, unfortunately it is not to the extent that parliamentary business at the moment is defined throughout, at least under the administrative rules, and even the existing travel rules still, as including partisan trips.
The only thing that is excluded from the travel rules is travel for purposes of elections, going to elections. However, so many other things are still left open.
On the caucus front, yes, indeed, as someone with some constitutional law background, I have considered the constitutional issues. The first part is that the privilege within the House certainly is of equal force to the freedom of association norms in the charter. However, even if we do apply those norms, as I think we should, section 1 of the charter allows for demonstrable limits in a free and democratic society. As long as barring access to caucus is tied in the way I believe it is to the problem of partisanship in the Senate, then there is a rational connection it would be minimal infringement. There would be no constitutional violation.