Mr. Speaker, I am, of course, the chair of the Standing Committee on Health, and I was presiding during the meeting of February 12.
Much has been made in this discussion about an arbitrary ending of the meeting and cutting off debate unfairly. The member for Vancouver Kingsway spoke equivalently regarding adjournments and suspensions, but I would like to emphasize to you, Mr. Speaker, that this meeting was not in fact adjourned erroneously or otherwise; it was suspended. It was suspended and the debate has not been terminated. The debate will resume when the committee next meets. The meeting is not over; it is only suspended, which is perhaps why the minutes are not available at this time.
Much of what has been said focuses on the problem of the lack of interpreters. This overemphasizes the matter of the interpreters. The problem on this particular occasion was that I was informed that there were no facilities available after a certain time, that staff, the technical staff and interpreters were only going to be available until 4:30 eastern time. It was my duty, as I see it, to respect the committee staff and workers and honour their circumstances.
The member of the Bloc Québécois at the meeting did express the problems she was having with translation during the meeting. I advised her at that time, as I advise everyone all the time and the committee as well, that if there is ever any problem with translation, they should proactively and instantly inform the chair so that we can take appropriate action.
In the case of the matter raised in this particular discussion today by the Bloc Québécois member, she alleges that I ruled on a question of privilege. In fact, I informed the committee that the chair of a committee does not have the power to rule on questions of privilege and I declined to do so. I did rule on whether the question raised by the member for Calgary Nose Hill related to parliamentary privilege. In my opinion, it did not. This was the decision that was under appeal by the committee, and it was on that particular decision that the member from the Bloc was unable to vote. However, once I was informed of that fact, I made an effort to make sure that she was able to give her vote and that the tally of the vote kept by the clerk was updated accordingly.
I forget which member it was, but either the member for Vancouver Kingsway or perhaps the member from the Bloc suggested that I had used this decision on whether a question of privilege was relevant in this case as a pretext to end the meeting. It had absolutely nothing to do with what was, in fact, not the end of the meeting but a suspension of it. The meeting was suspended strictly and only because it was my understanding that the facilities of the House were not available and that we were actually overstaying our access to them.
In terms of explaining why we could no longer carry on, I did explain that it was because of the availability and—