Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. I am rising on this question of privilege at the earliest opportunity.

Shortly before the summer adjournment this past June, you, Mr. Speaker, had been asked to rule on whether or not a prima facie breach of privilege existed surrounding the finding by Elections Canada that members of the House had contravened certain sections of the Canada Elections Act. This finding had been followed by a letter from Elections Canada asserting that members in question should therefore be suspended from the House and prevented from sitting and voting until the matter was resolved.

I and a number of colleagues made submissions on this matter. On June 18, 2013, you, Mr. Speaker, noted a serious gap in our procedures in the House in cases where an impasse of this sort is reached in a dispute between a member and Elections Canada. You thereupon ruled that the situation did warrant further study and allowed for the House to be seized with a motion that would refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The House adjourned for the summer recess later that day, and the motion unfortunately died with prorogation of the session.

I ask, Mr. Speaker, that you today take as given the arguments that were made in June, as well as the ruling that you rendered then. Accordingly, in order to save time, I adopt by reference the exact words of my own intervention on the question of privilege found in Hansard for the first session of the 41st Parliament, on June 10, 2013, pages 17994-18001.

If I could be indulged for about a minute, I would like to reference key passages from the Speaker's ruling of June 18, 2013.

The current situation—and the various interventions on the matter—points to a serious gap in our procedures here in the House in cases where an impasse is reached in a dispute between a member and Elections Canada....

Therefore, in the absence of statutory guidance, should a Standing Order mechanism be developed to guide the Chair in such cases?

To answer that question, I believe it would be helpful to the whole House, and to me as Speaker, if the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs were to examine the issue with a view to incorporating in our Standing Orders provisions on how the Chair and the House ought to deal with such matters in the future.

Then you went on to say:

For his part, in remarking that he had a certain appreciation of the Speaker’s position in the absence of any guidance at all, either from the statute or from the Standing Orders, as to how to execute the provisions of subsection 463(2) of the act, the member for Toronto—Danforth came to a conclusion with which I can entirely agree, namely:

“this honourable House cannot function without the Speaker and the House as a whole working in concert...”.

It seems evident to me that the lack of a clear process is not satisfying the needs of the House nor indeed of the individual members concerned....

However, the Chair is faced with the fact that some have argued that it is just and prudent to continue to await the conclusion of legal proceedings, while others have maintained that the two members ought, even now, not to be sitting in the House.

I believe that the House must have an opportunity to consider these complex issues. This approach is founded on an ancient practice summarized in a section of Bourinot's, fourth edition, found at pages 161 and 162 of that work, where it states:

“In the Canadian as in the English House of Commons, 'whenever any question is raised affecting the seat of a member, and involving matters of doubt, either in law or fact, it is customary to refer it to the consideration of a committee'.”

Accordingly, the Chair has concluded that there is a prima facie case of privilege here....

In summary, then, to bring clarity to the situation at hand and to give the House a voice on the matter and to seek its guidance, the Chair has concluded that immediate consideration of the matter by the House is warranted.

I am prepared to move that this matter be dealt with by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and will move a motion to that effect upon your invitation should you, Mr. Speaker, rule again that there has been a prima facie breach of privilege in this case.

Craig Scott

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