Mr. Speaker, on a point of order as it relates to the upcoming budget speech.
The Minister of Finance made it clear to everybody in the lockup that the budget was embargoed until 4 p.m. It has been long-standing parliamentary convention in this place that the budget is not to be made public before the Minister of Finance makes it public in the House and presents it in the House. It has also been a long-standing convention that the budget is not to be released before North American equity markets close at 4 p.m. eastern standard time.
What happened is that well before 4 p.m., the Minister of Finance table dropped the budget, and then proceeded to go into the public sphere, the public realm, and start commenting about his very own budget, while everybody else was still embargoed and prevented from talking about it until 4 p.m.
I rise on this point of order and ask you, Mr. Speaker, to contemplate the matter, and ask you to rule on this at some future date, about whether or not parliamentary convention was followed and about whether or not breaches of privilege were executed on.