Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I am very disappointed, as my colleagues have already expressed, in the fact that...and Mr. Easter has consistently done this. Consistently, every issue du jour, every flip-flop he has, is now the “issue of the day”.
I'm sure we'll get into this on the Roundup Ready alfalfa, but who was the parliamentary secretary when they allowed the plots for Agriculture and Agri-food? It was Mr. Easter. Now of all sudden he's decided he's going to change, he's going to flip-flop, just before he wants an election, which isn't necessary, with his coalition partners. He's decided he wants to make sure the public knows, for voting purposes, that this is his position.
But that's not what we're talking about here. We'll talk about that in a minute. What we're talking about here is motions. What we're talking about here is the fact that our committee has a policy that we will respect the order in which motions are brought up.
I know this policy may not be documented, Mr. Chairman, but if you seek the blues, I believe you will find that we have an agreement amongst all parties that we respect the order in which our motions are brought forward. I believe that is very clear in the blues surrounding the initial meetings we had, as well as in consequential meetings where we discussed this kind of thing.
The fact of the matter is that Mr. Easter has a motion on fertilizer and the fertilizer industry. This can be a very important motion, I think, with what's going on in the world today, and as prices start to escalate once again.
But Mr. Easter, instead of talking about things that we can actually get ahead of, decides to do his issue of the day. Mr. Albrecht is absolutely right: what he's doing is bullying the committee around to get his way with his coalition partners. It is absolutely unacceptable.
Mr. Chairman, we have a precedent that we have set. I refer you to page 1051 of O'Brien and Bosc, where it talks about the decision-making process in regard to motions:
A motion is needed to submit a proposal to a committee and obtain a decision on it. A motion is moved by a Member to have the committee do something, order its Chair and staff to ensure that something is done (an order) or express an opinion on a matter (resolution). Where the motion is debatable, moving of the motion triggers a period of debate. If no Member wishes to speak to the motion, the debate ends. The Chair then calls for a vote on the motion.
I'll skip forward to page 1052, under “Moving Motions”, which clearly states the following:
A member of a committee may move a motion at any time in the normal course of a meeting, provided that...moving the motion does not violate any rule the committee may have adopted in respect of the period in which motions can be moved.
I do recognize that we do not have it in writing, I believe, but if you refer to the blues, it is a verbal agreement amongst all parties of this committee that we would respect the order in which motions come.
Now, part of this is so that we don't stack up motions so that the opposition or Mr. Easter or individual members can continue to throw out their “I'm doing something on the fertilizer industry”. All he's doing is leaving the motion sit on the table so that he can do press releases on it whenever he feels like it.
I think, in the best interests of this committee, if we are to move forward, if Mr. Easter wants to drop or put his motions to the bottom of the list so that we can more expeditiously get to his motion, which is now his issue of the day, I'm more than happy to deal with that. But I believe it's almost a breach of privilege that other members of the committee are automatically pushed aside every time Mr. Easter decides he has an new issue of the day.
Who does this affect? It affects our government side, because we're outnumbered here. We're not going to pull the chair, because we believe in parliamentary democracy. They always talk about....
Whenever we pull the chair, the first thing Mr. Easter says is, oh, the tyranny of the majority; how can you guys do this to us? But we sit here, we play by the rules, and all he wants to do now is use the tyranny of the majority to overrule our parliamentary rights as members of Parliament to bring motions forward.
That is exactly what he is doing in this situation. He is riding roughshod over Mr. Richards' and Mr. Hoback's parliamentary privilege to bring motions forward. I think it's very disrespectful.
I think this is a very important motion that you'll be ruling on here, and I hope that you'll rule in the right way.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.