Good afternoon, colleagues. Colleagues, I will now provide my ruling on the point of privilege raised by Ms. Bisaro on October 21, 2013, with respect to comments made by Mr. Menicoche on Friday, October 18th on the capital plan. The Speaker’s role
when a point of privilege has been raised is to determine whether the matter was raised at the earliest opportunity and whether, on the face of it, a breach of privilege has occurred.
I do find that the point was raised at the earliest opportunity.
A breach of privilege occurs when individual Members are obstructed in the performance of their duties. It is a very serious matter. In this case, while Ms. Bisaro may have been offended by Mr. Menicoche’s comments, she was not obstructed in the performance of her duties. I, therefore, find that there has been no breach of privilege on the face of it.
The point of privilege is to address very serious matters like harassment and intimidation that could prevent a Member from doing his or her job. I would like to discourage Members from using a point of privilege to tell the House that they have been offended by others’ comments.
If this were to become a common practice, I suspect we could be dealing with points of privilege every day. There are other times to challenge each other's positions, like Members’ statements, Committee of the Whole, and replies to the opening address.
At the same time, I have heard some comments over the last few sitting days that could be taken as offensive. We work as a consensus system. You have some difficult issues before you, but I am sure you can find a way to make your point in a respectful way.
As I’ve said a couple of times already in this sitting, remember why we’re all here: to work for the
betterment of the people of the Northwest Territories. Let’s make the best use of our time here and get to work. I remind all Members why we are here. Mr. Miltenberger.