—opportunities this government takes to seemingly curtail debate.
This bill seems to have suffered that same fate. We are not bringing these ideas forward to Canadians. The very reason we have a Parliament is for all of us to come together and debate these bills in an open and transparent fashion, and to not suffer from the government unduly taking over the process, which seems to have been what was attempted here. It's an unusual step, indeed, a rare step, a questionable step, and a step that simply betrays that a government doesn't want to benefit from a fulsome debate.
We need to have more opportunities to bring forward amendments as members of the committee, as members of the House of Commons. It is a private member's bill, after all. It is a member's bill that's to be debated amongst colleagues, members from all of the parties.
In Parliament when it comes to private members' bills, as much as possible, these bills are essentially treated as non-partisan bills. We saw it just yesterday with the private member's bill on having a certain date to celebrate Pope John Paul II. It had significant support from all the parties in the House of Commons. I thing it was clear that was, in fact, the nature of private members' bills: to indeed bring forward that level of support and that level of debate amongst all of the members of the House of Commons.
In this case we're seeing a private member's bill that's been almost completely turned on its head by the government members of the House of Commons. That, again, betrays the very nature of the private member's bill.
We have this process in place specifically to allow members who are not government officers to bring issues forward to this House of Commons. In this particular case, that process was betrayed, and it's of great concern.
I question whether this might be a precedent. If it is, all of the private members of the House of Commons have reason to be very concerned. Their bills could be adopted and modified by the very officers of the government the private members process was meant to protect them from.
It betrays a lack of understanding, perhaps, of the history of the private member's bill process in this House of Commons. It betrays a certain expediency by government officers, that they would take that opportunity, when so many other opportunities are afforded them, to bring forward their bills.
Private members' bills need to be treated as sacrosanct. The right of private members to bring forward their proposals from their constituents needs to be considered an inalienable right, if you will, of members of this House of Commons. The very fact that we had a controversy in the House of Commons recently on Motion M-408 betrays to what extent private members want to defend their rights to bring forward their bills and their motions without interference from government officers. And that debate is ongoing.
We are one of the few countries that allow private members to bring forward their bills. We've had delegations from countries, from overseas, that have come to ask us how that process works. They're interested, because they don't have that same process. They want to see whether they can integrate our process over there.
I would find it very unfortunate if I had to explain to them that our process works as long as government officers don't turn that process on its head and turn a private member's bill into an apparent government bill. I don't think that's what they come to Canada to hear. I suspect they come to Canada to hear how we work collegially to bring forward private members' bills to support members in their endeavours to bring issues forward from their constituents.
I suspect that when other countries look at us through this process, they're probably very discouraged. Certainly I don't think the ones I've met would have been very pleased to hear the way this bill has been treated by members of this House of Commons.
We need to respect that process. It has history, it has meaning, and it's a process for which our predecessors fought hard in order to have the opportunity to bring these bills forward and to have a debate.
Now, there are limits to this process. We have only a few hours of debate, unlike government bills that have essentially an almost unlimited period of time, or at least—the current time allocation motions notwithstanding—the time that's available for government bills to be debated is very lengthy indeed, as it should be. Government bills have consequences, or on the face of it they should have consequences, for all individuals in Canada. Private members' bills sometimes deal with specific constituents, and perhaps that's why we have less time to debate them.
Be that as it may, it was a compromise, because in the past we simply didn't have any time at all to debate them. So having any time at all, we need to be respectful of that. We need to be cognizant of the fact that there was a fight in the House of Commons to be able to get that right, and that right should be respected.
I have difficulty seeing how that right is being respected here. It's a dangerous precedent. It's a precedent that could lead private members, commonly called backbenchers, to revolt. If you squeeze too hard, people fight back. We've seen that in the House of Commons recently and we're going to see it again, I'm sure.
There have to be limits to the way the government can bring its bills forward, and this is one of them. Private members' bills are exactly that: they're private. They are not the public domain of government officers.
We need to be very cognizant of our history, and we need to understand why the history transpired as it did, in order to respect the institutions we have here today and in order to help them grow in the future. We're simply not measuring up to that high standard right now. That's unfortunate, because it might lead us down the wrong path.
The amendment here I think helps guide us back to a proper path. I think it will help bring back a little bit of balance to the debate, a debate that I think has been difficult. It's brought out a lot of emotion. It's a debate towards the end of the parliamentary session before the House rises for the summer, one that takes on a certain urgency, which to some extent explains why we're still sitting here at this late hour. This is not the only committee that has sat at such a late hour. In fact some have sat for hours and hours and hours, and days on end. But those debates are worth having. We're talking here about helping residents become citizens.
In the case of individuals who want to join the Canadian Armed Forces and become citizens, we're offering them a fast track to that citizenship—which is laudable, indeed laudable, but in so many ways insufficient.
To twin this with the idea of removing citizenship gives an odd carrot-and-stick element to this bill, which has been criticized by so many individuals. The permanent members of this committee will certainly be aware of it, and I'm sure the parliamentary secretary no doubt has a great recollection of it all.
We really need to be thinking about what the objective is here. What constituents are being aided here, and to what benefit?
I have no doubt that Mr. Shory has a number of constituents who would see this bill as being a step in the right direction. That he reflects the will of his constituents, I applaud him, but surely he has so many other constituents who would want another option as well to be able to get that citizenship that isn't just limited to those who are going to enter the Canadian Armed Forces.
We need to be looking at the big picture as well as the micro. In this case, the micro has been criticized by a number of individuals, and for good reason. The bill seems to ignore the fact that there are legislative obstacles for those very people that the member is trying to help. They will only be given the opportunity to benefit from the beneficial sides of this bill through exceptional circumstances, and subjective exceptional circumstances.
I don't think that individuals who enter the Canadian Armed Forces—certainly the ones I've spoken to—would be satisfied that there would be an exceptional subjective circumstance whereby they might gain Canadian citizenship even through the terms of this bill. It's insufficient. That is why these bills benefit from debate, in order to identify the insufficiencies, in order to benefit from the testimony of expert witnesses and also from the experience of colleagues.
I think the committee is especially well placed to hear from the expert witnesses, but the House of Commons is where you're going to hear from your colleagues as to where there are possible opportunities for amelioration of the bill.
The private members' bill process does not allow for significant debate in the House of Commons on that front. To bring this bill forward to the House of Commons is probably in certain ways a step in the right direction. But at the same time, we have to understand the limitation of this bill, that the debate in the House of Commons is terribly limited and encadré, boxed in, by certain rules that don't allow for fulsome debate.
Perhaps the parliamentary secretary was right in some senses to bring forward certain amendments in the sense that this probably warrants a more fulsome debate in the way that a government bill would have opportunity to be debated. But we're not talking about a government bill here, we're talking about a private member's bill.
I would certainly invite the parliamentary secretary to speak to his minister to see if there are other ways the government could help in the situation of a backlog of individuals who are looking for Canadian citizenship. But when we're looking at this particular bill, I think we have reason to pause and reason to be concerned. We simply are talking about a bill that, while it might have started as a private member's own initiative, has taken on an air of government responsibility.
This part is the most worrisome of them all. We really need to be looking at the process that this bill has gone through and at the issues that were brought forward in this committee for where the ameliorations could be.
Unfortunately, the amendments that were brought forward by the parliamentary secretary I don't think fully addressed what was being brought forward by the witnesses. In fact, it turned the bill on its head. That's terribly unfortunate. We should not be doing that.
A private member should be defending his bill with all of his might. The private member brought it forward in the first place for good reason, I'm sure, and that private member should take the criticisms and the suggestions from government officers with a certain reservation, with a certain hesitation.
I don't want to tell the member how to deal with his private member's bill per se, but I do suggest that he would have benefited from discussing with the minister the point that government business belongs in government business and private members' business belongs where it belongs.
This bill will probably have a lot of difficulty getting all-party support. It continues to be hotly contested whether in this House, in this committee, or outside among refugee and new Canadian circles.
It's a disturbing bill. It's going to have to be improved.
With that, Madam Chair, I throw the ability to speak back to you.