Mr. Speaker, you are right, and I ought not to have intervened and offered my commentary on the parliamentary secretary to the House leader's commentary. There is a certain sort of meta-level to there that perhaps ought to be left to one side. Let me return, then, to the motion introduced by the member for Brossard—Saint-Lambert, which is the issue at hand.
That motion said that we will proceed to orders of the day, but what it would do is end the discussion on a question of privilege before that question of privilege has been voted on, thereby taking away the right of every member to vote on her or his privileges.
This privilege is not something that is unique to the members who were held up. Being delayed access to the House of Commons is an item of privilege that is absolutely integral. It is the foundational privilege we have here, along with freedom of speech. It goes back to the days when King Charles I and his thugs tried to stop members of Parliament from coming to the House so that he could engineer a majority by essentially locking people in their hotel rooms and waylaying them in the streets. That is where this comes from. It is a matter that was raised about two years ago by Yvon Godin, a New Democrat and member at the time for one of the New Brunswick ridings, who was delayed for other reasons, although they were similar. These are circumstances that are specific but relate to all of us.
The issue of delayed access keeps on changing as construction schedules change, as high-profile visitors arrive here, and as security risks go up and down. These are matters that are in need of constant adjustment and examination. Taking away the privilege for us to vote on it is taking away a fundamental right here. It is obvious that it was never intended that these matters would go to committee without a vote of the House, that they would be removed without a vote in the House.
The member for Brossard—Saint-Lambert introduced her motion after those earlier comments that I gave by pointing out that a member of the procedure and House affairs committee, the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, had given notice of a motion in committee that says:
That the committee examine the Question of Privilege raised by the Member for Milton regarding the free movement of Members within the Parliamentary precinct
thereby apparently obviating the need for a vote in the House. That is problem number one, which affects the privileges of all of us. We do not want a situation in which matters of privilege can be brought before the procedure and House affairs committee by the simple expedient of a member moving a motion in that committee.
For one thing, not every proposal for a question of privilege that has been found to be a prima facie question of privilege is necessarily going to be accepted by the House. I have never gone back and done any historical research, but there is a reason that we do not simply have the Speaker refer it without a vote in the House. The House's word on this is vital. If we want to change the Standing Orders so the Speaker can send this off to the House unilaterally without it, just by saying, “I think it is a prima facie case, so off we go; there will be no debate of the House”, that would be okay. However, that standing order does not exist. The current standing order does exist.
The proposal to change to the Speaker having unilateral decision-making authority on this not only does not exist, it is also not part of the government's discussion paper and it is not part of the government's vaunted promises to change Standing Orders in its election platform. It is not anywhere. It has suddenly arisen out of thin air: We will just unilaterally abrogate the Standing Orders and therefore the privileges of every member of this House on the fly.
That is unacceptable. There is a standing order—