Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing from members in this House that committees are independent. That is simply not true. At every committee of this House, whip's staff are in attendance to make sure that members are in compliance.
We also have a situation where, on February 13, Liberal members of the justice committee openly admitted that an office of a member of the government, the House leader, openly coordinated with the Liberal members on the appearance of witnesses in front of the committee.
Clearly, committees of this House are under the thumb of the government. That is why we need an order of this House to ensure that the committee hears from the Prime Minister. I would remind members of this House that, in my view, it is a violation of parliamentary privilege, a violation of members' rights, for any member of the government, of the cabinet, to even communicate with a member of the committee about the business of the committee.
I would quote from page 265 of the 24th edition of Erskine May, Parliamentary Practice, where it says, “the chairman of a select committee...had exceeded the bounds of propriety in participating in a conversation with a government whip about matters within that committee's remit..”.
We are far from that independence of a committee in this place. That is why we need this order of the House to be adopted, to ensure that the committee does its work and holds the government accountable and gets to the bottom of this mess. It is clear to members of this House and to me that the committee is under the control of the majority, under the control of the government House leader's office and the whip's office.
That is why I encourage Liberal members who are not part of the government to support this motion. I encourage six or seven of them to join with us to support this motion to ensure that the Prime Minister is brought in front of committee to get to the bottom of this matter.