Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the opportunity. I'd like to congratulate my colleague Mr. Lamoureux for his breathtaking intervention just now and a well-earned water break indeed.
I share his concern that this bill risks not getting all-party support, which would be unfortunate. The process that's been invoked until now has been difficult and, in many cases, without parallel. We have here a private member's bill, not a government bill, where a government minister has proposed a number of amendments—a very unusual step and one that calls into question the validity of this even being considered a private member's bill.
I'd like to point out that all members of the House of Commons, with a few exceptions, have the opportunity to present private members' bills in the House. The exceptions, I think, are very revealing: ministers and parliamentary secretaries. And yes, I would have a reaction to that as well. Parliamentary secretaries and ministers are not allowed to present private members' bills, and there's a reason for that. They are government officers of the House of Commons. Private members are commonly referred to as backbenchers. They need their time in the sun. They need the opportunity to be able to speak freely within the House of Commons without undo influence. This bill has been influenced perhaps more than any other.
I'll remind the members of the process involved. The private member's bill goes through a process, a time-honoured process of some 30 years now in Canadian politics. We have had this process in place where there's essentially a lottery, a lottery of private members who are put in an order of precedence whereby they can present bills or motions to the House of Commons—and I'll get to the distinction between a bill and a motion in a moment—and are in fact encouraged to do so. In fact, there's an unlimited number of bills or motions that can be presented, but the member must determine the one within the order of precedence that he or she will in fact debate in the House of Commons.
Mr. Shory had the opportunity to be within roughly the first half of members who were selected what was essentially a lottery, and had the opportunity to present his bill a little bit earlier on. We're almost midway through the 41st Parliament if, indeed, it does last a whole four or five years. He had the opportunity to present his bill according to that order of precedence. Here I'd like to point out that I'm more or less at the bottom of that order of precedence. I have no idea if I'm going to have an opportunity to present my bills, but I certainly look forward to being able to debate any bills that are brought forward to this House. We have that order of precedence for a reason. Everybody gets a turn, depending on the length of the parliament. Every parliament is defined from one election to another as a parliament. We're currently in the 41st Parliament, and the order of precedence was set.
Again, I'd like to bring it back to the point that only private members have the opportunity to present these bills—not ministers, not parliamentary secretaries. When a minister tries to present amendments to a private member's bill, it in fact puts into question the very validity of that private member's bill. Is it really a private member's bill if a minister, who's not allowed to present bills within the order of precedence to private members bills, proposes a series of amendments. Then the question really is about whether we are even discussing a private member's bill. Are we in fact not discussing a government bill? And if it's a government bill, it falls under a series of new criteria. I think my colleague Mr. Lamoureux mentioned a few of them and they bear repeating.
Private members' bills only have a certain amount of time to be debated in the House. They're essentially an opportunity to bring forward motions or bills in an express manner, in a rapid manner, with very little debate.
I'll get to the process of that in a moment. I just want to point out that if government ministers introduce amendments to a private member's bill, they're essentially circumventing the opportunity for members of Parliament to be able to debate those motions fully. That is a clear violation, as far as I'm concerned, of the spirit of private members' bills and their place within our parliamentary system.
Private members' bills, when they're presented, have the opportunity to be briefed, to be put through a process, whereby experts within the House of Commons are helping them to vet the bill, to properly draft the bill, to see whether it will meet certain criteria.
This bill actually had the benefit.... This was before the amendments were brought forward, suggested by the minister. We had the opportunity to hear from experts, from clerks, from lawyers, from experts within the House of Commons on whether the terms of this bill actually met the basic criteria of a private member's bill. The question still remains whether it's actually a bill that should meet those criteria.
The only real break or possible opportunity for a bill to be rejected is through our private members' bill subcommittee—which I happen to sit on, if I can take an opportunity for full disclosure. The private members' bill subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, commonly known as PROC. That subcommittee has a duty to vet private members' bills or motions according to a series of criteria.
It bears mentioning what those criteria are, so I'll just mention them now. According to Standing Order 91.1, the criteria are that bills and motions must not concern questions that are outside federal jurisdiction. Bills and motions must not clearly violate the Constitution Act, 1867 to 1982, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which as we know is part of the 1982 Constitution Act. Bills and motions must not concern questions that are substantially the same as ones already voted on by the House of Commons in the current session of Parliament, or as ones preceding them in the order of precedence. Bills and motions must not concern questions that are currently on the order paper, or notice, as items of government business.
Those are the four criteria that the private members' bill subcommittee base themselves on to approve or disapprove a bill.
More specifically, I'd like to point out that a bill is deemed votable right from the get-go. It's only deemed non-votable if the subcommittee deems it so, according to those four criteria.
I think the fourth among the criteria bears addressing here, that bills and motions must not concern questions that are currently on the order paper or notice paper as items of government business.
Now, while this bill doesn't actually break the stated wording of that criteria, I'd say it actually breaks the spirit. Again, because the minister brought in so many amendments, it bears questioning whether this is in fact not government business. Government business, as we know...and I think Mr. Lamoureux put it quite well a moment ago when he said that bills that are a part of government business have the benefit of exhaustive debate in the House of Commons—or at least in a normal Parliament it does.
We have the serious difficulty right now that government business seems to be fast-tracked at an incredible rate. We also have omnibus bills that make it clearly impossible to debate issues of great importance to Canadians in a fulsome manner.
But the government seems to have found another way, a third way, to fast-track their legislation, and that's to piggy-back them onto private members' bills. At least that seems to be what's going on here.
If it hadn't been for the fact that the minister had brought so many amendments, trying to divert the meaning of this bill, then perhaps my impression wouldn't be accurate.