What this is meant to deal with is it's inserting four words. At new subsection 49.8(1) in the government's amendment G-4, where it starts “At the first meeting” it should read, “Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions, the first meeting”. The reason for inserting the words “Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions” is it's technical in the sense that what we have here is a structure designed by Mr. Chong to have a bunch of prescriptive rules and they read like prescriptive rules. Now we're shifting into a structure that makes them optional, and what makes them optional is that each caucus votes on them. They're sitting at a very juxtaposed, almost contradictory, way and just as a matter of legislative drafting to create the sense of a transition, I would suggest adding those words so that we're signalling that everything that's gone before is now being governed by what's coming after.
I recognize that the government amendment does include subsection 4. You see that on page 5 of government amendment 4. It says, “The provisions referred to in each of paragraphs 1(a) to (d) apply only if a majority of all caucus members vote in favour of their applicability”. One could say that's indirectly an application clause. It basically says none of those rules beforehand apply, but really it's written as a rule to say what kind of majority is needed. It's not written as an application clause. Rather than inserting an application clause trying to figure out where that would be, we're on the record; we all know these are going to be optional rules, but I would just suggest a technical amendment that would link the two sections better than the current drafting does.