Mr. Speaker, I will keep my comments brief. I also want to thank my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst for his intervention and for raising this point of privilege. I agree with him totally.
He is right. The incident that happened today has happened before. I was a member of the procedures and House affairs committee in 2012 when we examined a point of privilege first brought forward by the member for Winnipeg Centre, who along with two other parliamentarians, was denied access to Centre Block during the visit of the Israeli prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu.
At that time, the procedure and House affairs committee called three witnesses. We heard from the Clerk of the House of Commons, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and an assistant commissioner of the RCMP in charge of policing services. All agreed that the rights of parliamentarians to come to this place, their place of work, as my colleague states, should never be impeded. In fact, the assistant commissioner of the RCMP apologized for the actions of one of its members who stopped three parliamentarians from getting to Centre Block. In two of those three cases, parliamentarians were actually told to take the East Block tunnel to come to Centre Block, rather than walk directly to Centre Block. I believe at that time it was for a vote as well.
During the testimony of the assistant commissioner of the RCMP, who appeared before committee, he said the RCMP would enhance its procedures to try to prevent this type of situation from ever occurring again. In particular, he said three distinct provisions would be taken.
First, all RCMP members who would be on duty during future visits of foreign dignitaries would be more aggressively and properly briefed on the rights of parliamentarians to gain access to Parliament Hill.
Second, he agreed to use the services of both the House of Commons and the Senate security services to assist in identifying parliamentarians, since as we all know, those security services are far more familiar with the faces of parliamentarians than are members of the RCMP.
Third, he agreed to have security from both the House of Commons and the Senate at key access points whenever there was either a state visit or a visit by a foreign dignitary that required additional security forces, such as the RCMP.
We thought at the time when we examined that issue at the procedure and House affairs committee that those three initiatives by the RCMP—plus a few other recommendations that we made at committee, such as encouraging all members to wear their MP pins, making sure they have proper identification, whether security cards, access cards, or that type of thing—that the situation would get better. We also recommended that all outside security forces, when on duty during the visits of foreign dignitaries, not only be briefed more aggressively and properly but have copies of the members handbooks so they could visually identify people who identified themselves as members of Parliament. We thought at that point in time that the situation would get better, because the RCMP had committed to making those enhancements to ensure that this type of incident did not occur again.
Obviously, something fell through the cracks, because it occurred today, and it should not have. At no time should there ever be any situation where members of Parliament, regardless of which party they belong to, are denied access to their place of work. That should never, ever happen.
I welcome the fact that we are going to examine the situation again. As a member of the procedures and House affairs committee, I might suggest in this place, and then later in committee, that if we had commitments from an assistant commissioner that were not followed through, perhaps this time we bring the Commissioner of the RCMP to committee to try to get his assurances that this type of situation will never occur again.
It is an important issue, one I think we should discuss. I will not take any more time because I firmly believe that all members of this place are in agreement with the intervention initially made by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst.
I would also suggest that perhaps, if there is a willingness from all of my colleagues, we go to a vote right now and make sure this issue gets before the procedure and House affairs committee, because I think we are all in agreement that it should.