Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate something that was just mentioned by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster and ask my friend from Winnipeg North about this.

There have been dramatic changes in the security here that I believe do infringe on fundamental constitutional principles of the supremacy of Parliament, the role of the executive and the differences in how parliamentary security should be handled. There was a snap motion on Friday, February 6. I was fortunate to be able to change my plans and be here for the whole debate. We did not hear witnesses or experts before it was pushed through the House of Commons to would change our security measures to a different parliamentary precinct approach, which puts the RCMP in charge.

Again, this is no disrespect to the RCMP, but I am very concerned about the primacy and supremacy of Parliament and the constitutional role of the House of Commons security, not to mention the fact that the security officers were the ones who most bravely and unarmed did the best job protecting us on October 22. Regardless of what may have been the executive's intention, many of those House of Commons security guards now feel demoted.

Now we have Bill C-59, bringing with it Division 10 of part 3, pages 73 to 97, which is all about creating a parliamentary protective service in an omnibus fashion. Again, we will not have enough time to study it and it requires the director of parliamentary protective service to be a current standing member of the RCMP always by law.

Does my friend from Winnipeg North think we are rushing into these changes without adequate study or review and could this motion on privilege give PROC a better chance to dig into these issues?

Elizabeth May

$565,861.00