Mr. Speaker, with apologies to my friend, I have been listening to his speech since he began. What we are debating here today is the Speaker's ruling on what took place when members of Parliament were denied access to the Hill. What the speaker found was that access was denied by circumstances beyond the members' control.
Any comments or speeches given suggesting otherwise are in fact a direct challenge of the ruling we are debating today, which is out of order for the member to do, unless he seeks to challenge the Speaker's ruling itself.
We can debate access to Parliament. We can debate the need to come together and find ways to make this place work, but inferring that the problem and the source of this was in fact the members of Parliament themselves is to challenge directly the ruling by the Speaker of the House of Commons. It is to suggest that somehow—this is important, and I do not interrupt often, as members know—that the calling of a vote, by whoever, was the source of the problem or to suggest that members of Parliament did not plan properly or that the buses being stopped from going on to the Hill with no notification whatsoever was the fault of the members of Parliament. It is in fact an attempt to justify members not gaining access to the House as if there were some sort of set of excuses that MPs were meant to anticipate, which was impossible.
The Speaker's ruling is quite clear, as you know, Mr. Speaker, since I know you have read it as well, that this is a prima facie case of privilege. That is what we are debating. If my friend from Winnipeg Centre would like to debate whether that is in fact true, then that is a challenge of the ruling itself. I hope that is not his intention, but that is clearly the way he has embarked on his speech, suggesting it is the fault of those who were denied access to the House of Commons and denied the right to vote on behalf of their constituents, which is clearly not the case.