Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in this debate. It has raised some very serious issues that the House will want to consider before the motion is voted on. When I speak to the motion I speak not just of the motion as originally proposed but to all the amendments. We are now debating a subamendment to the main motion.
It is instructive to look at the terms of the original motion and the terms of the amendment the government proposed, which in my view makes the most sense and which will clarify the situation for everyone if it is adopted. I know the Reform members will disagree with what I have to say but they are going to have to listen to this because it is important.
The main motion wants the House to decide the issue in advance, decide that sedition has occurred in this instance and that the matter of the seditious acts of the hon. member for Charlesbourg
ought to be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for study.
If the issue is whether or not sedition occurred, and I submit that is what the committee should be studying, why would the House express its view on the actions of the hon. member for Charlesbourg before the committee undertakes its study? If it were adopted here in the House as the view of the House, that would be the end of the matter and there would be no point in having the committee study it.
The whole purpose of the referral to committee is to give the hon. member for Charlesbourg an opportunity to present his side of the case. There is a hearing in committee. The committee hears witnesses and evidence. The committee acts as a tribunal or court. When it makes a determination of the issue it brings a report to the House which the House can accept or reject. The matter could also be referred back to the committee for further study or with directions that the committee do certain things or present a certain kind of report. The fact is the House is master of this procedure. The House refers the matter to committee and the committee is the one that does the investigating. The committee acts as a kind of judge, although the House retains the right to vary the judgment of the committee. It is like a right of appeal.
Hon. members opposite seem to have missed the point. Certainly the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt who proposed the motion spent three or four months studying the issue in great detail before he came to the House. The hon. member missed that famous reference to a case in the time of James I that my colleague from Vancouver Quadra came up with the other day. I would have thought that after four or five months the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt would have had every precedent that could be found, but he did not. Nevertheless, in spite of all that research, he came up with a motion that in effect condemned the hon. member for Charlesbourg before the hon. member had any opportunity to explain his position before some of his colleagues. This is taking away the hon. member's elementary rights.
I know the Reform Party has trouble with law and order issues. I am glad to see the hon. member for Calgary Southeast. I know she is still ashen from the treatment she got in her caucus meeting yesterday. I read all about it in the media this morning. Perhaps later tonight we will hear her make a speech on the subject and she will tell us about law and order.
I know the hon. member for Calgary Centre has flown the coop because of the treatment he received at the hands of his colleagues in caucus yesterday. I suspect the member for Calgary West skipped the caucus. If he had any sense he would have stayed away. If he had a lot of sense he would join the Liberal Party.
These members are being treated like that because they have views on law and order that are at variance with their colleagues. One wonders if the hon. members were not whipped at their caucus meeting because that is certainly a practice some of their colleagues seem to favour. They want to introduce whipping in the Criminal Code again. When we deal with sedition, we are not necessarily talking about whipping. I hope that is clear to members of the Reform Party. I know they love that kind of punishment and feel it should be meted out to teach people lessons.
In this case we have to give people the right to be heard. That is an elementary principle of our criminal law system which I hope I do not have to repeat too often for hon. members opposite. It is one we have to follow in this House when we look at the facts of this case. I submit that the proper procedure is to refer this matter to the committee and allow the committee to hear evidence and come up with a determination as to whether or not sedition has occurred.
The subamendment that has been proposed to the government's motion wants some words put back in. They have changed it a little bit. They have weakened slightly but they want "seditious nature of the" put in. I cannot tell this House how much I oppose this amendment.
In my view, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is the proper place for a determination of the issues that are before the House in this motion. The whole matter should be referred to the committee for study without the House expressing its opinion on the merits or otherwise of the matter. That is the point which seems to have gone clear over the heads of hon. members opposite.
I have tried to clarify this. Some of my colleagues on this side of the House have also tried to clarify it. I hope the point is now clear. We will vote against the subamendment. We will support the amendment. Once the motion is amended, I will be happy to support it.
I know members of the Bloc Quebecois are nervous nellies over this issue. They have realized that one of their colleagues could be in trouble if the committee makes a finding that is contrary to their hon. colleague's best interests. That is a matter for the committee to decide.
I am not going to argue the merits or demerits of this case one bit in the House. I am quite prepared, since I am a member of that committee, to wait and hear the evidence before the committee and make up my mind after I have heard the evidence. I will give the hon. member for Charlesbourg the benefit of the doubt, as any trier of law or fact in this country should do, as I am sure you would also do, Mr. Speaker, if you were sitting on that committee. It is what
any member of this House should do in the event the committee comes up with a report on the issue.
The fact is that is the question which has to be decided. It will be decided in the committee, not here. I am not going to argue the merits of the case or even discuss the law relating to sedition in the course of my remarks. I want to stick with the procedure that is being followed in the House to ensure that we are treating one of our colleagues fairly by giving him the benefit of the doubt in terms of what may or may not have transpired in relation to these events. That is something we have to do. He is entitled to the benefit of a reasonable doubt, as is every person who is accused of an offence in Canada.
I want to turn to some of the remarks made by hon. members opposite this afternoon in the course of their speeches on a subject that is dear to their hearts, including the hon. member for Calgary Southeast. That is the issue of closure on this debate. They have suggested that by limiting debate today we are restricting the right of Canadians to hear about this very important subject.
Normally I have opposed closure in the past and I usually do now. Our government has used it sparingly and only in cases where it is an obvious necessity. In this case there is no need for the debate to be a long one. This is a question of referring a matter to a committee for study. There will be a further opportunity to debate this matter when the committee reports to the House.
Hon. members opposite can rant and rave all they want about restrictions today. However, the fact is that some day, at some future time, assuming the motion carries, the procedure and House affairs committee will table a report in the House and somebody will move concurrence in that report triggering another debate in the House.
There is a lot of opportunity for debate. There will be ample opportunity for committee hearings. If hon. members want to go to the committee to make their views known, I have no doubt the chairman and other members of the procedure and House affairs committee will entertain those applications to be heard. If members have such strong views on this and feel they can contribute evidence to the committee, I am sure they will be heard and I am sure they will want to be heard.
This is not a motion on which closure is inappropriate, particularly given the amount of time we have already spent on the matter. I want to point out that when closure is applied under Standing Order 57 the House continues to sit until 11 o'clock at night. Mr. Speaker, you will recall that just a couple of weeks ago we heard hon. members opposite talk about the evils of closure.
On Monday, March 4 the government imposed closure on a motion which allowed for the reinstatement of bills. I notice that hon. members opposite have reinstated some of their own bills under the aegis of this great motion.
