Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I really don't know where to begin. I think the record clearly shows, with the motion that was adopted by the House unanimously the day following our agreement on September 19, how we were going to proceed with dealing with these provisional standing orders. I think that, as we say out west, we've plowed that ground, and I don't intend to plow all of those issues again. I don't see what we're going to gain by continuing a filibuster, because we've already made, I think, all the points that we can make on this.
If we proceed today with voting on the motion as it is, I will be voting against it on principle. As I said right from the very beginning--and my colleagues on the government side have reiterated this--we're not opposed to any of the standing orders. That was never the issue. We had had what I believe was a pretty good preliminary discussion at the House leaders and whips' meetings of some concerns we had with some of them, which the staff should meet about and perhaps work through.
We have never suggested that the changes would be anything other than very minor in nature. We also have had conversations in the past about the clerk's perhaps making some technical wording changes to these to make them more definitive in nature. Doing so would mean the standing orders would be clearer when the clerks need to interpret them from time to time. Also, hopefully it would be very clear to members of Parliament from all parties the intent of these standing order changes and how they work.
So that was always the intent, as far as I was concerned, of the discussion that we had and the agreement that we reached. As I say, Mr. Chair, I think I've plowed the ground fairly thoroughly about how upset I am about this, because it does strike to the very core of how we operate in Parliament, of how we have to operate if Parliament is going to be a functioning Parliament or a functioning people's House. We have to be able to trust one another and take someone's word when we come to these agreements.
Our staff met this morning, and I think they had a pretty good brief discussion. As Madam Redman already indicated, our main concern was this issue that was presented about the notice of motion and a meeting having to be held within five calendar days. It's been a bit problematic, more problematic than some of the other provisional standing orders. I think that even the general public--and I'll be the first to admit that they're probably not all that interested in most of our standing orders and how this place operates--would have to agree that common sense would say that's a fairly short period of time. Over the summer, for example, if something were to arise, and a committee member made a request that a standing committee meet, and it happened to be the July 1 weekend, three days would already be gone before people could even find out whether their schedules could be juggled to get to a meeting. Then you need travel for members to get to a central location in a country as large as Canada.
I think having to hold a meeting within five days is a bit unreasonable. So that's one of the changes we were thinking of. From what I hear from Madam Redman, upon reflection, she would consider that it might be reasonable to say ten calendar days when the House isn't in session, whether it is during the summer recess or the winter recess.
Those are the types of things we wanted to look at, to have the staff take a first cut at, so to speak, and then have the House leaders and whips involved in discussing that to hopefully arrive at unanimity.
So that was the first thing that happened this morning. As well, I talked to the clerk personally this morning, and she indicated, as she has in the past, that there may be--she didn't say absolutely, as she hasn't drafted them yet--some minor technical wording improvements, nothing that would change the intent of what we're trying to do with these provisional standing orders, just some improvements to the specific wording. So that was something else we had wanted to explore further before we passed these.
Mr. Chairman, the situation now is that I have yet to be presented with any logical rationale of why we have to proceed like this. We had an agreement. The House right now is bound by the agreement that was expressed through the motion that the government House leader introduced unanimously in the House on September 20, which kept these provisional standing orders in place until November 21 to give us some time to deal with them.
They're still in existence. There's no immediate danger that they're going to run out today if we don't do this. This motion says that they be adopted as is, basically, as they are today, or as they were, I guess--it actually says “as they were on October 5”, and they haven't changed, so that's still the same as they are today--and that they be reported back to the House for a vote and adopted forthwith, even without these minor changes that I think we could arrive at giving unanimous consent for.
First, it strikes at the whole issue of trust, and second, it's a very inefficient way to run this place, to say okay, with no rationale of why we have to do this today or tomorrow. Why would we put these in place when we're all agreed now--it sounds like--that we will even put something else in place that says we can further change them in a week or a day or a month, or whatever? Of course, all of these things are always up with majority support for further change and further improvement--hopefully, improvement.
I'm more than a bit puzzled and upset that we couldn't arrive at some sort of an agreement. If the opposition is.... The only thing I'm left with is that somehow they're paranoid that we're going to pull some fast one and have these die after November 21. So other than that the opposition seems to be seized with this culture of paranoia, I don't know what the rationale is for why we have to do this now, when we seem to be agreed that there are going to be a few minor technical changes that aren't going to change the intent of what the provisional standing orders do.
It would seem to me to be, even only on the issue of efficiency.... Take out all the other: whether we did or didn't have an agreement and whether we have seen a diminution in the level of trust that's necessary between us to accomplish things on behalf of Canadians. That aside, it would seem to me reasonable and common sense that we would wait a few days.
Maybe there's some room here. I presented this in private conversation with both the official opposition House leader, the Honourable Ralph Goodale, and Madam Redman prior to this meeting, and they said maybe we could come to some good old-fashioned Canadian compromise. If they're that paranoid that something's going to happen between now and November 21, we could at least amend the motion so that we could give our staff and clerk time to interact and make these few changes that we can all agree upon and introduce it next week. Would that be unreasonable to request that type of thing?
Without beating this to death or plowing the ground over and over again, I guess I would suggest.... I'm sorry, and I apologize to the committee, I haven't had a chance to have this in sort of firm writing, but I simply throw it on the table as at least a possibility of something we could agree upon, some amendment to the effect that rather than have it the way it ends with Madam Redman's motion that we're debating, that the adoption of this motion be reported to the House forthwith, we would remove “forthwith” and put something like “following minor unanimously agreed upon amendments, but no later than one week from today, October 26, 2006”. That's still almost a month prior to the November 21 deadline.
I'm just trying to be a little reasonable here. Let's make these few small changes. If we can amend the motion to do that, then we can all support it. That's better than having me and my colleagues stand on principle and vote against this motion. To me, it doesn't make any sense, notwithstanding that we thought we had an agreement. Even putting that aside, it doesn't make sense to proceed if we're all in agreement that there's going to be some changes to it.
So I would propose an amendment such as that. The wording could be cleaned up or altered. I just jotted this down—I don't have it prepared. But I think that if there is a legitimate concern we should put a deadline on it. One week from today, it has to be done, otherwise it reverts to the original motion.