Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege concerning a Canadian Press report published on Thanksgiving weekend. It reported that our colleague, the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, is potentially facing professional disciplinary proceedings in connection with his parliamentary committee work. According to this report, the hon. member, a physician, is the subject of a complaint to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, of which he is a member, concerning his supplementary opinion attached to the first report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying.
Specifically, The Canadian Press reports that a member of the public, whom I understand is also a plaintiff in constitutional challenges concerning the current law, which absent parliamentary intervention is due to sunset next year, has complained to the college about the hon. member's “written arguments against expanding access to [medical assistance in dying] for mental illness until fundamental concerns are addressed.” It is further understood that the hon. member was given until October 22, Thursday, to answer a college investigator, following which the complaint will be referred to a college committee for review.
The bottom line is that a member of the House is facing serious legal proceedings over his contributions to a parliamentary proceeding. This, I believe, offends the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in Parliament. Paragraph 3.52 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, explains just how central this is to the work of Parliament: “Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of the rights and parliamentary privileges accorded to members. It is both the least questioned and the most fundamental right of the member of Parliament on the floor of the House and in committees.”
While we often think of this freedom in terms of not being sued for defamation for what is said here, the reality is that it is much more widely scoped than that. This privilege is anchored in article 9 of the Bill of Rights, adopted by the Parliament of England in 1689: “That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament”
Those last words “Place out of Parlyament” are key here. To be sure, it should not be interpreted as meaning literally any place outside of here. Public debate and accountability of politicians are fundamental features of a parliamentary democracy such as Canada's. As Janse and LeBlanc explain at paragraph 3.57, “The House of Commons could not work effectively unless its members were able to speak and criticize without having to account to any outside body.”
While we have clear jurisprudence in Canada concerning the use of parliamentary proceedings before the courts, and to a lesser extent royal commissions and human rights commissions, we do not have a body of precedent concerning where we ought to draw the line concerning “any outside body”, to borrow the phrase of Janse and LeBlanc, or a “Place out of Parlyament”, to use the wording enacted by the convention on Parliament. Authorities elsewhere have, however, contemplated this matter.
For its part, the 1999 United Kingdom Parliament Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege commented at paragraphs 91 and 92 of its first report:
The prohibition in article 9 is not confined to the questioning of parliamentary proceedings in courts. It applies also to any “place out of Parliament”. This is another obscure expression of uncertain meaning. To read the phrase as meaning literally anywhere outside Parliament would be absurd. It would prevent the public and the media from freely discussing and criticising proceedings in Parliament. That cannot be right, and this meaning has never been suggested. Freedom for the public and the media to discuss parliamentary proceedings outside Parliament is as essential to a healthy democracy as the freedom of members to discuss what they choose within Parliament. So the embrace of the phrase is narrower than this, but wider than merely “courts”: the whole phrase is “...any court or place out of Parliament”.
The interpretation of this expression has never been the subject of a court decision.
Meanwhile, Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, fifth edition, at page 702, explores the history of the phrase and its evolved interpretation:
the reference to any place out of Parliament, if taken literally, would inhibit criticism or examination of parliamentary proceedings on any occasion outside Parliament. Such a result would be an absurdity that would unacceptably infringe citizens' freedom of speech. Occasional judicial statements have rhetorically imputed this extreme meaning, but these suggestions have not been taken seriously by either the House or the courts. The parliamentarians of 1688 probably had in mind the jurisdiction of the councils formerly established by royal prerogative to exercise executive and judicial functions. The latter functions were in conflict with the jurisdiction of the regular common law courts.
In promulgating the Bill of Rights 1688, members sought to ensure that councils established by the King, in addition to the regular courts, could not examine parliamentary proceedings. In the modern State, such parallel, non-curial executive and judicial functions are exercised by tribunals and other bodies established by legislation, and the prohibition on questioning proceedings in Parliament is taken to be addressed today to such bodies.
For a practical, contemporary approach to the 17th-century phrase, the 1999 U.K. joint committee opined at paragraph 95:
The Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 (Australia) applied the article 9 prohibition to any court or tribunal, and defined tribunal as any person or body having power to examine witnesses on oath. This seems to provide a clear and sensible basis for the future. In general, power to administer oaths is dependent upon statutory authority. The power is conferred on bodies whose proceedings are endowed with a degree of legal solemnity and formality. It means, for instance, that article 9 will apply to coroners' inquests, lands tribunals and industrial tribunals. Beyond such formal tribunals, article 9 will not apply. By this means the boundary can be clearly delineated, with an embargo on examination of parliamentary proceedings in all courts and similar bodies but not elsewhere.
In addition to Australia, the Parliament of New Zealand has since similarly legislated on parliamentary privilege, adopting a comparable definition of “tribunal” in its Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014.
Turning back to the immediate case at hand, subsection 76(1) of the health professions procedural code, a schedule to Ontario's Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991, vests the college investigator with the authority of section 33 of the Ontario Public Inquiries Act, 2009. What this means is that the investigator has the power to issue summonses to any witnesses, including the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, legally compelling the witness to provide a statement and/or documents. Failing to comply with a summons may result in a contempt of court order, among other consequences.
What is more is that the hon. member, as a physician, is under a positive obligation imposed by subsection 76(3.1) of the code to co-operate with any investigation into him. Failing to co-operate could amount to a further allegation of professional misconduct under the regulations made pursuant to Ontario's Medicine Act, 1991, and specifically as behaviour considered “disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional.”
Beyond the procedural concerns about co-operation with the investigation where the member's supplementary opinions would be questioned, the complainant's goal here is to hold the member accountable for his supplementary opinions. In other words, she wants the member's opinions to be impeached, as article 9 of the Bill of Rights puts it. To quote paragraph 36 of the 1999 U.K. joint committee's report, “the meaning of ‘impeach’ is not clear: possible meanings include hinder, challenge and censure.” A censure is exactly what the complainant is seeking here.
To sum up this aspect of my intervention, our colleague is facing legal proceedings with very serious personal and professional consequences to him because of his words published in connection with a committee report contrary to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in Parliament. While the procedural authorities are clear that supplementary and dissenting opinions are not part of a committee's report in terms of representing a committee's views, I would submit that they are nonetheless proceedings in Parliament as far as the protections of parliamentary privilege are concerned.
Janse and LeBlanc clarify at paragraph 3.54:
Proceedings include the work of the House and members’ actions in the context of the parliamentary process. Proceedings are not limited to debates. Members generally take part in proceedings by speaking during debates in the House and its committees, but also by various recognized forms of formal action, such as presenting documents, petitions or committee reports....
Moreover, committee reports, including any supplementary or dissenting opinions, are publications of the House. Subparagraph (i)(ii) of the special order adopted by the House on February 13, 2026, constituting the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance and Dying, gave the committee the power, among other things, “to print such papers and evidence as may be ordered by the committee”.
Janse and LeBlanc add context at paragraph 20.55: “it is now, by and large, interpreted as a power to publish the necessary records and documents at its discretion, namely on the committee's website. It is the practice to publish the Minutes of Proceedings, the Evidence and the reports that committees present to the House.” This is important because, in addition to the centuries-old parliamentary privilege of freedom of speech, the House also enjoys a relatively newer privilege concerning the right to publish papers, traced back to the United Kingdom's Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 and explained by Janse and LeBlanc at paragraphs 3.49 and 3.50:
The Parliament of Canada Act provides protection for the publication, by order of the House, of parliamentary papers such that no lawsuit may be brought relating to the contents of the papers or their appendices. This includes all documents published by a committee acting under the authority of the House....
Within three weeks of the opening of the First Session of the First Parliament of Canada, the Senate and the House passed An Act to define the privileges, immunities and powers of the Senate and the House of Commons, and to give summary protection to persons employed in the publication of Parliamentary Papers, which claimed for the Parliament of Canada the privileges, immunities and powers of the British House of Commons. This statute also provided that parliamentary papers were protected by privilege and protected publishers of the authorized parliamentary papers and records against civil or criminal suits. These provisions are now in sections 7 to 9 of the Parliament of Canada Act.
Regardless of which privilege avenue the Speaker considers, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is, through this investigation of a member of Parliament's contributions to a parliamentary proceeding, trespassing over the privileges of the House of Commons.
The Canadian Press reports that for her part, the complainant “acknowledges in the complaint that a member of Parliament is entitled to freedom of speech”, yet she then proceeded to ask that the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River be held accountable for his very speech. What good is the freedom of speech if it is only meant to protect the things that we can all agree on or, worse, that only those in positions of authority agree on?
This is why I, a Conservative MP, am rising today on this question of privilege about something concerning a political opponent who sits on the Liberal benches. The case that has emerged is one that I believe could set a dangerous precedent if it is allowed to proceed unchallenged by the House.
Every single party represented in the House, including the two unrecognized parties, have members who have come from and are still members in good standing of these self-regulated professions. If members of the House now must self-censor during important debates in Parliament because their opponents outside of the House will weaponize professional disciplinary bodies to imperil their professional reputations and their ability to earn livelihoods after their service here, then we have lost the freedom of speech and the important contributions that those members must make.
This is not just a loss for those specific MPs or even for all 343 of us. It is actually a loss for Canadians as a whole. As Janse and LeBlanc explain at paragraph 3.7:
...the privilege of freedom of speech is secured to members not for their personal benefit, but to enable them to discharge their function of representing their constituents without fear of civil or criminal prosecution for what might be said in the House and committees. When a constituency has returned a candidate, it is the electors' right that this chosen representative should be protected from any kind of improper pressure.
Facing legal proceedings, professional misconduct investigations, potential blemishes on a professional record and possibly the inability to practise a profession are, I submit, forms of improper pressure. If prospective parliamentarians are told that in addition to the usual challenges we all face to varying degrees, some of them will also be putting their professional careers at risk if, once elected, they speak up for their constituents, especially if they have something to say that does not neatly line up with elite, establishment opinion, what hope do Canadians have that these potentially fine representatives will be willing to offer themselves for public service through election to Parliament?
That our constituents can and should hold us accountable in the so-called court of public opinion is natural, appropriate and a vital part of political and democratic life. Cancel culture, however, is not. We must together draw a firm and bright line that defends and supports the essential role the House of Commons and its members play as the beating heart of Canada's democracy.
Given the unprecedented nature of this issue, coupled with the somewhat vague and older statutory wording involved, which I have quoted, this is something the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs should study thoroughly. It should, in turn, provide recommendations concerning both the specific case of the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River and more generally for any future repetition of a challenge such as this.
Please join me in standing up for freedom of speech here in Parliament and in protecting our colleagues from the Kafkaesque threat of professional misconduct hearings being weaponized against them because of their parliamentary work. This is not just about special exemptions for MPs from rules that apply to everyone else. This is about protecting MPs from cancel culture and protecting them from having their professional designations threatened for speaking out on behalf of their constituents.
Even if a tribunal ultimately rules in favour of the member, in too many cases the process itself is the punishment. The fear of professional repercussions will have a chilling effect on the ability of MPs to speak their minds fully. The words spoken in Parliament or written in a committee report should be judged at the ballot box and the ballot box alone. Canadians themselves hold the ultimate authority in judging the words we use in this place.
Should you agree, Mr. Speaker, that this situation amounts to a prima facie case of privilege, and I strongly urge you to do so, I am prepared to move an appropriate motion to refer this matter to the committee.
