Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Reid, if we suspend I can come around and give you an update, if that's okay.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I was meant to meet with the table research branch of the House of Commons on Tuesday, but of course this meeting continued on, and I stayed around until around eight, so I wasn't able to meet with them. Most of my time has been here, so now I have a colleague working on the pape

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's the same question that Mr. Chan had for Mr. Bosc. It was whether or not there were similar instances of premature disclosure of a bill on notice found in other jurisdictions. Going back to 2001, I looked into the U.K. House of Lords, the U.K. House of

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Those were included in the briefing. As I understood it, the request was to check other jurisdictions.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can either check in their manual, which is the equivalent to the O'Brien and Bosc, or I can just contact their clerk's office in those jurisdictions to get back to me.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It would only be speculation on my part to comment on that although it might just be a specific Canadian convention that, when a bill is on notice, that bill is off limits. I could look into other jurisdictions to see if they have something like that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's set out in the Parliament of Canada Act that it's 21 days. There are specific reasons why you can be absent, including illness and a couple of others that I don't recall offhand.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that in these cases of privilege, it is a very good idea to check out other jurisdictions. I can think of another case of privilege, which I don't need to bring up, where it was very informative to look at the House of Commons in Australia and the U.K. They had gone throu

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There were other similar incidents where the Speaker had found...it was to do with bills that were on notice and the information about them had been divulged, but they were not sent to the committee. There was one instance fairly recently. The member from St. Paul's had posted s

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The parliamentary privilege in this particular case that has been infringed upon is that essentially there's a well-established practice and accepted convention that the House of Commons has the right of first access to the text of bills it will consider.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Precisely. Two similar questions of privilege arose, both of them in 2001: one in the spring of 2001, one in the fall of 2001. I can give a brief summary of the matters, the rulings, and how the committee dealt with those particular cases of privilege. In spring of 2001 th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will discuss this matter with the experts at House procedural services—they've been super helpful so far—and see what their expert views are on the matter.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I could give a historical note on the reason why first reading, second reading, and third reading occur. This is a holdover from the Westminster parliaments from the days of old, when people couldn't read. It was also very expensive to print things. They would read the bills eith

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will come back to the committee with an answer to that.