Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for his question.
He is absolutely correct. Rights and obligations, what we sometimes call parliamentary privilege, exist for one clear reason: to prevent the executive from abusing its powers. The judiciary controls the executive, but it acts after the fact.
Basically, in Parliament, when we want to solve problems before they appear, we have to propose amendments and keep an eye on what the executive is doing. That is why I believe the motion before us presents a fundamental problem. First of all, it was moved by the government and this is an excellent example of an abuse of power on the part of the executive, which is imposing its solution on the legislative branch.
Parliamentarians have an obligation to defend their rights, but not because they like the power. Rather, it is because Parliament's reason for being is to control the executive. Otherwise, the executive would behave as it did long ago. It would do as it pleases and members would not speak out and would not be willing to take their obligations seriously.
Ultimately, we would end up with an executive over which we had almost no control. More and more we are trying to control the executive in Canada using the judicial system. However, it would be much more effective and less expensive if that were done here in the House.