PrivilegeWatch Update: Is the suspense killing you, too?

If so, I have bad news for all of us: According to the latest on the procedural wonk grapevine, House Speaker Peter Milliken is not expected to rule on the three questions of privilege currently before him until next week at the earliest, which -- actually isn't all that surprising; whichever way he goes, it's going to set precedent, so it's not unreasonable for him to want to take his time before coming down with his decision on whether any or all of the MPs who rose today have met the threshold for him to find a prima facie case or cases of breach of privilege. 

It's also not entirely clear whether, once he gets down to deliberating, the speaker will be informed by those replies that he invited the ministers named in the motions to provide. Earlier today, there was some suggestion that at least one of the three -- Defence Minister Peter MacKay -- was willing to cede the floor to Justice --  more specifically, the justice minister  -- since it isn't his department that is responsible for redacting the documents in question. (It is, however, his department that is the custodian of record of at least some of the original, unredacted documents, so I'm not sure that logic is entirely sound.) 

Anyway, we don't yet know whether Nicholson plans to take the speaker up on his offer, and he's under no obligation to do so, but you'd think he'd take the opportunity to lay out the government's argument one last time before the speaker repairs for the next few days to consider his preliminary rulings.  

On the plus side, Colleague McGregor has posted the full details of that odd -- and previously unmentioned -- precedent cited by Government House Leader Tom Lukiwski in his intervention earlier today, in which he claimed that Milliken himself had agreed that the prime minister should not be required to table documents that he referred to during debate if there was concern that it could put national security at risk. It's probably worth noting that the incident in question involved a point of order, not a point of privilege, and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the power of parliament to subpoena persons, papers or records, but it makes for interesting reading nonetheless, so feel free to play armchair House law clerk in the comments. 

That's it for the moment -- I'll update this post if I hear anything else tonight -- and remember, for seriously exhaustively detailed coverage of this morning's privilege-related House action and intrigue, click here.