Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, because this is about the rights of all members to a safe work environment. It is about the obligations parliamentarians have to respect the law of Canada. The belief of some parliamentarians that they are above the law of Canada is troubling. We can look at the human rights rulings on privacy that have already been made. For someone to say that their right to keep their medical information private in a pandemic supersedes the right of a workplace to have a safe environment, those privacy rights do not trump the others. I did not use the word “trump” there deliberately, but it certainly had its effect.
I would ask the Speaker to also consider recent court rulings. The ATU ruling on the TTC, and the Quebec Superior Court ruling, have been very clear about the needs and rights of the employer, which is us as the collective members of the House, not just to each other, but to the staff who work here and the cleaners. The claim by the Conservatives, that they believe they have the privilege to ignore pandemic law and the human rights and privacy rulings that have come down and that have all been clear, and that there is a privilege in the House to override them and put people at risk, is an infringement of my rights as a parliamentarian and my obligation to ensure that everyone in the House is kept safe.
This is bigger than us. This is bigger than the bickering and bantering among the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc. This is about the message we are sending to Canada right now. It is a message that in the House of Commons, in order to preserve the privileges of an elite group, the Conservative members can override the pandemic standards and the rights of privacy that have to be balanced with the rights of safety. Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to consider what we have seen already coming down from the Human Rights Commission.
As for the issue of exemptions, I understand that it is not my business to look at the exemption of any member, but it is statistically ridiculous to suggest that a number of Conservatives can claim exemptions when we know that the medical exemptions are minutely small. We end up with parliamentarians coming in saying that they have pieces of paper stating they have an exemption, which is a ridiculous and unfair situation. A number of Conservatives are doing that.
I will close with this. I have to share a lobby with Conservatives who walk around without their masks on. I am being put at risk by the fact that I do not know if any of them have these paper exemptions or if they have been vaccinated. I do not need to know, but I need to know that the House will be there to protect my rights and those of all the staff who have to deal with the Conservatives who walk around without masks on.