[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, June 22, 1995
.1125 
[Translation]
The Chairman: Order please. Since Mr. Hermanson is not here and since he was supposed to speak on the emergency debates issue, I suggest we review the Standing Order concerning the naming of a member by the Speaker.
[English]
Mr. Silye (Calgary Centre): What was his proposal?
The Chairman: It was concerning emergency debates, Mr. Silye, and he's not here to discuss the matter further. We made some progress last day on it. But it's his baby. I'd hate to push that one.
Mr. Silye: Yes, exactly.
The Chairman: Why don't we try the naming of members, which Mrs. Catterall had raised? We have a working document prepared by the researcher. Perhaps Mrs. Catterall would like to speak to it briefly.
Ms Catterall (Ottawa West): The reason for my concern, frankly - and I appreciate the background we've got on it - was that it just seemed to me inadequate that somebody can abuse the privileges of the House, be asked to remove himself or herself from the House, and then be allowed to come back without correcting the - call it a misdemeanour or whatever you want.
The decorum of the House, the ability to carry out the work of the nation, depends on us all abiding by rules. It seems to me that somebody who has violated the rules and violated the respect one should have for other members requires more than simply leaving the chamber for a few hours.
I don't think somebody should be allowed back until they have corrected the mistake. If they have used unparliamentary language and they have refused to withdraw, they have thwarted the authority of the chair to maintain order in the chamber. One measure I would like to see is that they not be allowed to return until they have corrected the incident by either apologizing, withdrawing or whatever the circumstances are.
I guess that would be my first and foremost concern. It can't be simply a little slap on the wrist. The proper conduct of Parliament is far too important and respect for the role of Speaker is far too important.
It is also an opportunity, Mr. Chair, to revisit the report that was prepared for the Speaker in the last Parliament. Those of us who were here then will remember two incidents in particular of racist comments in the House by one member toward another, racist and/or sexist comments of a very unpleasant nature. I know the report to the Speaker at the time recommended substantially harsher penalties for that particular kind of abuse of a member's privileges. I'd like to see us pursue that.
Mr. Pickard (Essex - Kent): I believe ultimately it is the responsibility of the Speaker to deal with those issues. However, it is my opinion that where a person has violated what the Speaker has determined is the proper code of working within the House, and the person has been asked to leave, what has happened is that it has given a national forum for their cause. They have used that and then come back into the House.
It seems to me that these should be recommendations to the Speaker, not hard and fast rules. I still think it's the domain of the Speakers to make the final judgment as to what is appropriate.
I would recommend that if a member so violated the code of conduct within the House, although it is his privilege to be in the House it may not be his privilege to speak until he has corrected the type of speaking he has done in the past.
It seems to me that if he is going to speak improperly about issues, condemn other members, his restriction of being able to speak in the House freely, as other members do, should be curtailed until such time as he realizes the importance of what he is saying in the House.
.1130
It would be appropriate, in my opinion, for the Speaker to view this as a case where if a person doesn't speak properly in the House and follow the rules of the House, then the Speaker has the right to limit his ability to speak in the House, not ban him from the House.
I think members do have the right to vote and do have the right to carry out those responsibilities, carry out most things, but if he is abusing the privileges then the Speaker does have control over this member's freedom of speech in the House until such time as he corrects what he has done improperly.
It would be my recommendation to the Speaker that this is an action that would be very democratic and still properly suit whatever the violation is.
Mr. McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra): This is a matter of constitutional law of Parliament and there are a substantial number of precedents going back over a very long period of time. In pre-parliamentary capacity, I have given expert opinion to various legislatures on this point, at their request. I am happy to say they have taken the advice.
It's basically an issue of privileges and prerogatives of Parliament, and the privileges and immunities of members are part of that. The Speaker can act with the authority of Parliament in a proper case. Assuming there is general party consensus, the leaders of parties may meet with the Speaker and a course of action may be decided on and voted by the parties. If there is no agreement between the parties, it can be moved by the leader of the House, but it would require parliamentary action to suspend the privileges of a member.
I don't think you can choose among the privileges. It may be that a vote would be to suspend the member for some days or to expel the member altogether, although the latter is caught by certain precedents that suggest that complete expulsion is limited to people who've committed felonies or certain other acts that are specified in parliamentary practice.
So if Parliament is prepared to support Mr. Speaker - he has very substantial powers and normally we would give great respect to the Speaker, but obviously they are not things to be done too quickly or too generously or you deprive a constituency of representation.
There is a good deal of law on this, and I think it confirms the thrust of Mr. Pickard's point that there are powers that can be used but they would require Parliament to act. The Speaker himself couldn't do it of his own decision and there are obvious difficulties in doing it simply on the motion of the House leader and the government party, but it can be done and, in appropriate cases, should be done.
I would counsel against our trying to legislate in this area without some fairly extensive study and examination.
The Chairman: Currently the Speaker can suspend for one day, for the remainder of the day in which the person is named, but that's it. There is the possibility of a motion being moved, usually by the government House leader, expelling the person for longer.
Mr. Boudria.
Mr. Boudria (Glengarry - Prescott - Russell): My view is - let me back up for a minute on what I was going to say and introduce another thought.
For me, the worst thing that could ever happen to me as a member of Parliament is to be kicked out of the House. I am speaking to my colleagues here as someone who was in the rat pack and so on, and I've asked some tough questions in my day, but I have never even been threatened to be thrown out of the House, let alone thrown out.
The position I took is that only my constituents would ever throw me out of this place. Therefore, if the Speaker threw me out of the place, that would be the worst thing that could happen to me so I don't want it to happen. If you don't want it to happen, you have to make sure it doesn't by behaving appropriately or at least not crossing that threshold.
.1135
That being said, then, I would obviously never want to be asked to leave the chamber by Mr. Speaker or by the Sergeant-at-Arms on behalf of Mr. Speaker. I do think there are people like me, perhaps not very many, perhaps not all - maybe there are many, not all - to whom being thrown out would be a tremendous insult to them and their constituents and they would never want it to happen. I think it's important that the penalty of expelling a member for a day be there - that's good - with the possibility of the House adding further days to that if the House feels it appropriate. That's also good.
However, there's a third dimension, and that's the one that was used by Speaker Fraser, perhaps in the absence of a rule, but he nevertheless used his discretion - it was never challenged - that if the member didn't apologize he would not see the member. You could be expelled for the day and come back a second day, but whether you were there or not would make no difference; Mr. Speaker would not see you. You wouldn't ask a question. You wouldn't give a speech. I would even go one step further than Mr. Pickard and say that Mr. Speaker wouldn't see the member even when he or she was voting. In other words, you could sit in the House after one day of being kicked out, but it would be as if the member were not there.
Until the member decided he would apologize to the House.... I don't want to name anyone. There have been some of these cases in previous Parliaments, so there's no example necessary. We all know what we mean. But until the member decided he or she was going to withdraw the words that were offensive, Mr. Speaker would not recognize his or her presence.
I don't know if any change in the rules is necessary other than for this committee to encourage Mr. Speaker - if a member still refuses to withdraw after being expelled and after returning to the House - to not see the member until he or she withdraws, and that the Speaker would have our support in this action. Maybe that sounds strict. The member can attend Parliament, as Mr. Pickard said, but on the other hand, there is certainly a strong encouragement to withdraw the offensive statement.
Sooner or later the constituents of that member would say, look, guy, we sent you to Parliament to speak on our behalf, and if you're going to concoct a scenario whereby you're unable to speak on our behalf, we're going to replace you sooner or later with somebody else who will, so sharpen up; withdraw what you said that is wrong. Maybe being the hero for one day or getting a headline because you got kicked out wouldn't last very long, because after a few days the constituents would start in the other direction, telling the member, we expect you to be able to speak for us.
[Translation]
The role of a member of Parliament is to speak up. So if you put yourself in a situation where you cannot speak in the House, you must change your behaviour or other people will do it for you. You will be replaced at the next election.
[English]
The Chairman: I'd like to wade into this for a moment, if members don't mind. I think the material we received was most interesting. I was surprised to see the special advisory report to the Speaker, because I had never seen it before. I find that odd.
Ms Catterall: I hadn't seen it before, either.
The Chairman: It was prepared by a committee. I knew many of the members on the committee, but I never saw this report until I got this document, as far as I recall. It's peculiar -
Mr. McWhinney: What committee was that, Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman: It is attached to Mr. Robertson's document prepared for us, and it was called ``Report of the Special Advisory Committee to the Speaker''. I recall it was appointed during the last Parliament because of particularly offensive language used by one member in respect of another.
Mr. McWhinney: It was a parliamentary committee.
The Chairman: It was an ad hoc committee established under the deputy speaker at the time, with representatives from all parties. The incident that sparked it was a particularly unfortunate one in terms of language. There was an immediate withdrawal, but then nothing happened. Once the language was withdrawn, there was no discipline in respect of the member because the offence had been corrected on the spot.
Mr. McWhinney: Was it a government or opposition member?
.1140
The Chairman: It was a government member who spoke disrespectfully of an opposition member at the time. It made a considerable media splash at the time.
What I wanted to do is point out that in our system there's no real penalty. The member who offends and who is named goes out of the House and then comes back with all rights restored and there's virtually no penalty. There's no reduction in pay, there's no fine, and there's no loss of privilege, aside from the right to sit in the House for the remainder of the day. For members who don't speak very often, and there are some in that category, the loss is barely noticeable and certainly would not be apparent to anyone in the constituency. If the member doesn't normally speak during the day, anyone watching wouldn't notice.
The British practice is to expel the member from the precincts of Parliament, which means the member is off the grounds, not allowed in his office, has no access to his staff, and I understand it may go further and that travel privileges are suspended and telephone maybe, but I don't know. The clerk may be able to tell us.
Mr. McWhinney: Not allowed to vote if it's -
The Chairman: No, they're not allowed onto the premises.
Mr. McWhinney: That is expulsion, but do they do that with a parliamentary vote supporting the Speaker?
The Chairman: I think it's automatic expulsion for the day, but normally there's a vote followed to make it longer and -
Mr. McWhinney: It's a parliamentary vote, though.
The Chairman: Yes, and we can do that. But my suggestion is that when we consider this we look at expulsion not from the House but from the precincts, so the office is denied, travel privileges are suspended and telephone privileges disappear.
An hon. member: Salary.
The Chairman: Salary is another possibility.
I think the constituents of the member ought to realize that their member has misbehaved and that access to him through his office, through the usual channel, is denied. The member is going to have to pay his own way home if he wants to return to the riding until the suspension is lifted. I think this would be a real penalty. You'd have members apologizing a lot faster and I think you'd find the conduct would be less offensive. It would tone things down in that regard. It would make members think a second or third time.
I'm putting that out because I think it's buried in this report a little bit, but it doesn't sort of say it directly.
I see the clerk wants to say something, and perhaps he may have other things to add based on his experience elsewhere.
Mr. Robert Marleau (Clerk of the House of Commons): Perhaps two points of clarification, if I can put it that way. In terms of what Mr. Boudria said, in the previous Parliament Speaker Fraser used the blind eye of the Speaker in lieu of the naming procedure. It wasn't after a naming; it was in lieu of, in order to get a member to come around to seeing the Speaker's point of view and the authority of the chair.
Strictly procedurally, once the Speaker has named and expelled for the remainder of the sitting, the matter is over and has been dealt with. It's like someone having served his or her sentence, if you like. The power vested in the chair has been exercised to its maximum and it has been dealt with.
The change post-1985, where a motion was required before a member could be expelled for the day, in my view has turned what used to be the House exercising its full powers on disciplining the membership and vesting it in the individual who occupies the chair into a contest between two people with the entire House observing. That dynamic, in my view, has changed the whole thrust of what is the authority of the House over its membership. You've seen shouts on one side, throw him out, throw him out, and people are kind of watching a sparring match to some degree.
In Britain, Mr. Chairman, in terms of the reference you have, once a member has been named, the Speaker puts the question and the House exercises its authority.
I believe that historically what happened to our rule in the pre-1985 period - that's 1983 to 1985, where we had a series of bell-ringing incidents - the naming procedure was used in order for the bells to ring. Far be it from me to comment on a dilatory tactic of any party in the House, but there was a series of namings. You will remember that then the bells were unlimited, so they were very disruptive to the plan of the day, including private members' hour.
.1145
The amendment that was brought in to vest the power in the Speaker unilaterally to decide when to expel a member was as much an attempt at diminishing the dilatory use of unparliamentary language or unparliamentary conduct in order to delay the proceedings of the House. So to solve one problem, the House may have diminished what has been the authority of the House to proceed and deal with the disciplining of one of its members.
The other thing is that not seeing the member, if I can use the Fraser dynamic, is not without risk for the Speaker, and Mr. Speaker Fraser would probably be the first to share this with you.
We have a list now in Question Period, and if an entire caucus the next day puts up the member who has committed the offence and he is the sole person standing in opposition to ask a question, what does Mr. Speaker do in those circumstances? We came very close in one incident to having that kind of challenge...caucus support, rallying around the offending member and furthering the contest with the chair.
What do you do if the offending member is a minister of the Crown and the government wishes that minister to be the one to answer that question, and it rises? You say it might not happen, but it is a possibility.
We had situations historically where a minister of the Crown was the offending member. There were considerable delays on the part of the government House leader to rise under the still-existing procedure before the motion would be moved for expulsion, which caused the Speaker some considerable discomfort during that delay period.
I just wanted to make the points that to catch the Speaker's eye is still the rule in the House, but the list has been introduced in Question Period which has, in my view, increased the potential for a ``Mr. Speaker versus an entire caucus'' conflict.
Mr. Boudria: With respect, Mr. Chairman, I still think that if we, in a report prepared for Mr. Speaker, indicate what would be an all-party agreement that Mr. Speaker cannot seek, if he wishes, a member for failing to do that...if that has the support of this committee in a report tabled and concurred in by the House, then it is the wish of the House that this be such, and all caucuses would have so indicated. So if all members have agreed, then, that this is the authority Mr. Speaker would have from here on in, a caucus deciding otherwise would be going back on its own word, let alone the wishes of the House.
Mr. Marleau: If it's an order of the House, it's an order of the House. The Speaker will follow the order of the House. I was just explaining the dynamics.
Mr. Boudria: Yes, I recognize that, and the Clerk and I had some conversations about this before. But I don't see why the two punishments, if I can call them that way, are mutually exclusive.
The Clerk indicated a while ago that once the member has ``served his time'', being kicked out for a day, there can be no other punishment. If we recommend and decide that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, that they can be concurrent, the member will of course be removed from the chamber for a day if he refuses on that particular day to retract. If on the second day he still wants to do so, he can take his seat and warm it up but that will be it. The Speaker would be recognized as having that authority and hopefully he would be recognized as such by a wish of the House itself.
I think it strengthens the Speaker's role and it diminishes the potential of the kind of confrontation that the Clerk talked about before.
I submit that you might want to add to that at some point. I don't know whether we want to do it now. This whole business of being kicked out of the House for this day and docked that day's pay is an encouragement to behave.
Mr. Marleau: It's done in British Columbia.
.1150
Mr. McWhinney: The case you bring here is an ideal case of a government Speaker...the offending member is a member of the government party and that, as I gather, is past history. The government party was embarrassed by their own member.
The more normal case is likely to be an opposition member and the rules that have developed have been designed to protect opposition members from the tyranny of the majority. In fact, we could cite many countries where governments use their majority to exclude opposition members arbitrarily and capriciously.
The starting point legally, though, is that Mr. Speaker's part derives from the House, no more and no less. We happen to have an excellent Speaker, and two days ago he handled a situation very elegantly and everybody approved. He did so with the authority of the House, and therefore to expel a member or to deprive him or her of the privileges does require legally the resolution of the House.
If Mr. Speaker is a person of stature and confident of the parties, he can do that without the authority because he knows people will back him up. But it's risky, and in the end, as was mentioned by the Clerk, it is the authority of the House. The House can vote to exclude him. It can vote to expel, but I warn you that the power of expulsion is now, I think, in most authorities' views constitutionally limited. An expulsion, for example, for less than a felony or one of the historical acts could, I think, be judicially challenged. It's one of the rare examples where Parliament is a high court. A Parliament traditionally might find another legal authority invoked against it. So in the end Mr. Speaker's authority is from resolution by Parliament, and I think it's correct that it should be this way.
Ms Catterall: I listened carefully to what Mr. Pickard said about the discretion of the chair. The fact is that the Standing Orders, as they are, limit the Speaker's discretion by saying that suspension is limited to the remainder of that day. The remainder of that day might be 20 minutes or half an hour.
I think that's not adequate, and if we want to add to the Speaker's discretion we might want to in fact remove this.
My very strong preference is that when somebody has offended the House this offence has to be cleared. It's not as if you've gone out and robbed a bank and then you pay your penalty. You can't unrob the bank; you can unoffend the House, and I think frankly a withdrawal should be required before the member is allowed to take his or her seat again.
I think the docking of one day's pay is a reasonable penalty for what I consider fairly serious. I think most members take it very seriously. As Mr. Boudria said, this to him would be one of the worst insults and humiliations he could experience, and most of us feel that way. Obviously, there are some members of Parliament who respect neither their colleagues nor the institution of Parliament by refusing to obey a direct request from the Speaker to withdraw or to apologize, as the case may be.
Those would be my recommendations - that the suspension is in effect until the offence has been corrected, and that for the period the member is suspended the member does not get a salary. I would prefer that to removing other privileges, which I think becomes administratively extremely difficult and perhaps punishes the constituents more than it does the member.
I'm curious about why no action was taken on this report of the special advisory committee to the Speaker, because, as I said, those of us who were in the last Parliament remember the two incidents that culminated in this report being requested. They were ugly, in a sense, because one comment was racist and one was sexist. There was very strong feeling among those of us who may be subject to those kinds of comments that the House had to show that this is a more serious offence than normal unparliamentary language.
.1155
I don't know why further action was not taken on this report, but that's something I would like us to address before we report back on this matter. I wonder if Mr. Marleau could tell me.
Mr. Marleau: My recollection, Ms Catterall, is that this was an ad hoc committee that the Speaker convened to try to address the issues, against a backdrop of a couple of incidents. It went back to the caucuses for consideration, and I don't think it ever came out of the caucuses. It stayed there.
Ms Catterall: It's not clear from the copy I have what parts of it were being recommended for amendment, because I can't distinguish between the bold and the non-bold in my particular copy.
It is certainly very much my feeling that I never want to see those incidents repeated. I want a very clear indication that this kind of behaviour in the House of Commons is more reprehensible than normal unparliamentary use of language or other offences that may occur. I don't know how it is appropriate to do that, but I'm happy to look at this again.
Having just passed legislation that says we consider offences based on bias, prejudice, or hate as more reprehensible and that there should be consideration of stiffer sentences in those circumstances, I think it is entirely appropriate for us to reflect that also very clearly in our Standing Orders.
The Chairman: I understand that the clerk may have to leave and that Mr. Marleau may have to slip out for a few minutes.
Mr. Lee.
Mr. Lee (Scarborough - Rouge River): I have great sympathy for the problem of what I would call the unresolved transgression, where the Speaker on a particular day - and let's say there's only half an hour left in the sitting day - has to deal with a very serious problem or transgression of the type we talked about. The member leaves the House at the request of the Speaker, and that is the end of it. These things can be trivial or they can be very serious. In any event, the matter remains unresolved, and I don't think that looks good. I think that's the essence of Ms Catterall's view on this, and I agree with her. So I think our procedure is deficient in that regard.
To put the whole matter to a vote in the House, then, politicizes it, which is not very healthy. It requires a trigger of some sort. I'd rather see that the Speaker have some extended and summary procedure such as extending the penalty or docking pay. I think we have to imbue the Speaker with some additional authority a little bit greater than the blind-eye technique and leave that with him or her. To do anything else undermines the Speaker and undermines the perception of Parliament's ability to take care of its own business.
The offence might be a verbal offence or it may be somebody who would take Mr. Knowles's cane and refuse to give it back to him. It might be very serious. I suppose the contempt procedure is available. We did get into a contempt...once.
Mr. McWhinney: Somebody seized the Mace in the last Parliament -
Mr. Lee: And that ended up in a contempt.... So that procedure is always there. I like the idea of docking a day's pay. But please note that when the member is removed on the first day.... No one stated that the day's pay should be docked for that day, and maybe we should dock the whole day's pay for the day the member is removed.
.1200
So I'd keep it pretty summary; I'd imbue the Speaker with an additional authority to have a second day's confrontation with the member on it and to dock a day's pay, along with whatever other penalties are there.
Mr. Pickard: Mr Chairman, I want to comment that everybody seems to be in agreement that the authority of the chair is most important, and I have no question that the Clerk has brought forth a very important point; that is, if the authority is not placed within the chair's purview of responsibility, then he has a very difficult time and does put himself up to a great deal of question when he takes action that is not spelled out properly for him to take.
I think that we, as a group, are maybe arguing about what action the Speaker could take, not the fact that the basic argument here is the authority of the chair and that the chair must have the authority. I believe it is important that we come up with at least a recommendation that the chair can take further action to mete out the penalty properly and give that authority to the chair.
I made the suggestion about the blind eye - I guess that's the way Don put it. Not recognizing a member would be an appropriate measure in response to an action a person has taken. Others have suggested docking pay, putting members off the Hill, out of their offices, and all of those are just degrees to which we empower the Speaker to act. But I think we all seem to be in agreement that it is very important. For any organization to operate, we must have power given to the chair in order to expedite decisions and make things run in an orderly fashion.
I don't think it is an occurrence that happens often, but we should design whatever it is very carefully and give the authority to the chair in order that he may deal with actions that are extremely inappropriate in an appropriate way. I think probably reviewing that paper, as well as taking something forward to Parliament to give the Speaker options beyond what he has right now, is critical if we are going to make sure that the chair, over time, has the ability to maintain that authority.
The Chairman: Mr. Hermanson, the last word on this will be yours. It's almost time to adjourn but we'll hear your words.
Mr. Hermanson (Kindersley - Lloydminster): I apologize for missing most of the discussion. Perhaps what I'm about to say has been said. In that case, I apologize.
In my almost two years in the House, it seems to me the most offensive and disgusting actions happen outside the earshot of the Speaker of the House. I'm not sure what you can do about that. I'm just concerned that if we change the Standing Orders we may be launching an allegation season, because as I said, the most offensive stuff is shouted back and forth across the floor and is not heard by the Speaker. Very seldom is something really obnoxious or unparliamentary spoken in formal debate. It does happen once in a while, and we've had a couple of instances in the last two years where members have been named. One of them was our member and one was from the Bloc. But there were certainly lots of times when members would have been named had the Speaker heard or could verify what was going on back and forth across the floor.
You know, the public is a pretty good judge of when someone has crossed the line. Now that the proceedings are televised, certainly whatever is done formally in debate is on record and can be scrutinized, and if someone does something inappropriate he or she will pay a penalty. But the people who don't pay a penalty for their actions are those who are not on camera, who are not heard by the Speaker and are doing far more despicable things and saying far worse things about other members than are ever recorded in Hansard or caught by the television camera.
.1205
I would be concerned that we are chasing after the wrong culprits here and that we might put something in place where we'll see a lot of allegations being made and a lot of requests to the Speaker - did you hear what so-and-so did and what they said? They should be named. This could be just to try to see if we can get somebody expelled from the House, or named, or penalized in some way.
The Chairman: Obviously we've bitten on a major item that can be discussed by many members over an extended period. We've perhaps got some food for thought. The material before us is worthy of consideration. We may not want to adopt the report holus-bolus, but we may want to look at it, particularly in light of the comments today.
Our time has expired. We have another engagement. I guess this will sit on the agenda for a future meeting. I'm not sure there's much out of today's discussion that we can say is conclusive in terms of proceeding on drawing additional material.
Mr. Langlois.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): I have not interjected thus far so as to avoid repeating the very appropriate comments of my colleagues, and was not intending to until Mr. Hermanson spoke. The fact is, all the speakers made rather general comments. Mr. Hermanson, however, referred to remarks made by members of the Bloc québécois, although no one else raised that matter.
According to my information, Mr. Leroux called the Prime Minister a liar and was expelled from the Chamber forthwith. If Mr. Hermanson has any further allegations to make about members of the Bloc québécois, I would ask that he make them now. If his intention is to attack the Bloc québécois, then I don't think it's very courteous of him to pointedly mention certain things that may have been done by Bloc members. What exactly did they do? If he has some specific allegations to make, then let's hear them. Otherwise, he should just refrain.
The Chairman: I'm perfectly certain that Mr. Hermanson did not mean to insinuate anything about any of the members represented in the House. His comments were of a very general nature, and I'm quite certain he did not intend to insult anyone. Would you agree, Mr. Hermanson?
[English]
Mr. Hermanson: I missed your very first comments trying to unwind this thing, but my comments were that one of your members and one of our members had both been named, and the way they were named had all been recorded on television and people could judge whether or not.... The Speaker made a judgment and I don't question the Speaker's judgment in naming both those members and asking them to leave, but not only were they under the scrutiny of the House and of the Speaker, they were under the scrutiny of all Canadians. If they misbehaved - and I include my own member, not just Mr. Leroux; Mr. Hoeppner was also involved in an incident - it was very public. Any newscast could replay that thing a hundred times, and Canadians could certainly have a hand in judging whether that person had crossed the line and done something inappropriate.
In fact, I feel Canadians can take disciplinary action against their politicians when they do inappropriate things in public. What I was concerned about was some of the stuff that goes on that's not on the camera, that's not within earshot of the Speaker, which I consider to be far worse than any incident we've seen in this Parliament where a member was named.
Do you understand what I'm saying? I certainly wasn't directing my criticism at any of your members. I was including the two members, what happened, and the fact that Canadians were aware of that and could see and judge, where a lot of things happen on all sides of the House where they can't see and judge, and the Speaker isn't aware of it either most of the time.
The Chairman: I'll declare the meeting adjourned.
We are continuing with a working lunch to discuss the fall agenda for our committee, and I suggest we continue up there.