Mr. Speaker, I thank you for having the faith that I will bring some additional information to this. It is important, because I will address a couple of matters that I have not heard addressed today.
First, I will start by saying that it is not often that I get up in the House to make remarks. I do not consider myself to be a parliamentary orator like my friend from York—Simcoe. I do not consider that I know that thick green book anywhere near to that of my colleague from the London area. The reality is that I do not have a university degree. I did not even finish high school. However, I do have a degree in hard knocks. I was raised in Saskatchewan and have many of those Saskatchewan values, as does my family. Those values include things like working hard, respecting the law, and respect for institutions.
What I am getting at is that those are the values of my constituents, who entrusted themselves to me for the next four years when they elected me in October of 2015. It is my job to ensure, when I stand in the House, that I represent their views, but it is also important that I represent what this institution stands for.
Today we are debating a motion and an amendment to a motion, which were moved by two of my colleagues. The motion and the amendment to the motion were moved by two colleagues who sit immediately behind me. I happened to be here on budget day when my colleagues arrived, and I can say that they were hurt. They were hurt by the fact that they were not able to be here to represent their constituents in this particular vote.
What I have seen from the other side is that some of the points that have been made need to be challenged. I refer to the debate yesterday. I happen to have the privilege—and I say “privilege”, because that is what we are talking about here today—of sitting on the finance committee, in which I have the opportunity on occasion to listen to the member for Winnipeg Centre. I was not in the House when he spoke on this particular privilege motion, but I did happen to catch him on the television in my office. I am going to quote what the hon. member said. I will not quote his entire remarks, but I must say that some of the comments he made yesterday are pertinent to what we are talking about today.
As I said, I was here on budget day, when my two colleagues could not exercise their right to vote, and I can assure everyone that they were hurt by it. What did the member for Winnipeg Centre say? He stated, “We are not supposed to dilly-dally in our offices.” What kind of response to a privilege motion is that by the member for Winnipeg Centre? That shows an attitude. What Conservatives are saying here today, and have been saying for the last several days, and have been saying in other places, is that it is a prevailing attitude that we see day after day in this House.
He further stated in his remarks that he does not think this should even be referred to a committee. This is a gentleman who is an elected member of this House, a former member of the military, by his own admission in his remarks yesterday, and an elementary school teacher. He said that he did not think this should even be referred to a committee, that we have the bureaucracy to figure this out.
How can a member from that government stand in this House and say that our privileges, whether they have been violated or not, should be determined by a bureaucracy? That is absolutely absurd. The problem that many of us on this side have is that we see the actions of the government on a number of fronts, and, frankly, we do not trust it. We do not trust that the government is going to do the right thing. We do not trust that it is going to fix the problem we were talking about here today. For that reason, we need to ensure that there is a ruling that is fair. As the amendment said, it not only needs to go to a committee, but it needs to have the highest priority at that committee. That is what we are talking about here today. We have seen what the current government does in terms of priority. There is only one priority that comes from the government, and it is its own priority. It does not matter what the issue is, it is what they want to do, and they are going to get it done whether they have to roll over the opposition or not.
I know that there may be other members of this House who want to speak, but I have heard what you had said, Mr. Speaker, on a couple of occasions, so I am prepared at this stage to move the following motion, seconded by my colleague from Banff—Airdrie. I move that the question of privilege regarding the free movement of members of Parliament within the parliamentary precinct, originally raised on March 22, 2017, be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.