Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. As often happens amongst the professoriate, I'm not going to agree with everything my friend Ken Carty says here. I will begin by saying that I don't get excited about this growth in the House of Commons. I think there has to be a cut-off. I apologize that I didn't

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll give you my answer, which is yes. The basis for it is my sense of members and constituencies, which is the same issue we have in the northern parts of Canada where the constituencies are very small in numbers but huge in size. It's also true in the northern parts of the prov

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It depends on the members. I remember speaking with one member from Alberta, and I said over the Christmas holidays, “How many constituency events did you go to?” Some of you can probably work out who it was. He said, “None.” I stared at him and said, “I beg your pardon?” He said

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm retired.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm always surprised, sir, but it's an honour to be here. I prepared some remarks which, with the permission of the committee, I will read, because I tried to be very precise in my expression of things. My observations on the privilege issue raised in the House of Commons by the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can do that, but it's simply an opinion on an extremely difficult topic. What I'm trying to suggest is that there's a spectrum here. It begins with things that are obviously offensive, but only offensive at one end. At the other end, it has items that are clearly producing harm

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I agree. On the other hand, there are parts of the law that protect people from offensive or potentially harmful speech acts, such as libel, sedition, or obscenity, and there are others. What we have here is a speech act—well, calling the web “speech” is, I think, acceptabl

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree, and I made the point here, which I really did not like making but I think has to be made, that the original statement that those who are not with us are in effect on the side of the child pornographers is certainly objectionable. It classes anybody with legitimate object

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I think I would have said there was a prima facie breach of privilege on which I would ask the committee to give me advice. I certainly find it offensive, but if I had been the Speaker, I would have asked whether we had transgressed that boundary between offensive and harmfu

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You're asking me for an opinion on something. I maintain that I'm not a lawyer. I can't give you a legal opinion on it. I can give my subjective, personal opinion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sir, you are part of the “High Court of Parliament”. I'm a citizen, and you're a member of the court in that sense, and you are dealing with a question of law. I consider it a breach of privilege, and that's a personal opinion. As I said, I'm not trying to persuade the committe

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There seem to me to be two different things. One is the penalties that the House itself can impose. If the House finds and can identify the person, it can bring that person before the bar of the House and find the person in contempt of Parliament. It can put them in jail. Jail, f

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. Parliament is free to choose what it wants to do. If you find a breach of privilege, I believe that the House can refer the matter to the civil authorities and that they can pursue it from then on. A court looking at it could take note of the proceedings of Parliament, and

Procedure and House Affairs committee  A committee is free to report whatever it wants, as long as it's in parliamentary language and relevant to the topic. That's certainly both in parliamentary language and relevant to the topic, so the answer is yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, because I have only a limited access to the information available. I have not looked at what happened at this committee before I got here. I don't know the other material that's available, except on the public record—in the newspapers, largely—and I find in civil life that p