Chair, thank you very much.
First, let me say that I think all MPs—certainly those of us on the government side—understand the issues facing the honeybee and those people who depend on the honeybee for their livelihood. I think it's important to note that the committee has passed a motion similar to this and reported it to the House. I think we did that in the last Parliament. It's still valid.
The second thing, though, is that Alex and I have had a number of conversations on how best to proceed with a national day of either the honeybee or anything else. The accepted protocol, Chair, is not for it to pass through committee and then somehow be reported to the House, and then the House does something with a kind of unanimous consent. The accepted practice is that a member of Parliament, if this is really important to them, use their private member's bill opportunity to advance a national day and that this be debated and voted on properly in the House.
To be fair, today I think we're voting on one from Geoff Regan, a Liberal MP, concerning a national day recognizing philanthropists. He has done exactly that. It's tabled in the House as a private member's bill, it is debated in the House, and it is voted on in the House.
In the last Parliament, or it might have been in this Parliament, Mr. Galipeau, one of our MPs, proposed a national tree day. It was exactly the same process.
It's important to respect these processes. For this reason, I would say that's the process my colleague should follow, rather than trying to move it through the agriculture committee and into the House, when we know it really isn't going to go anywhere in the House because it's not following the accepted process.