I echo my colleague's comments. I won't repeat them ad nauseam, particularly on how there were good amendments in this process, as my colleague Mr. Kmiec said, on strengthening the language and also with regard to adoption.
Colleagues, I want to emphasize that this is an exercise on how not to approach private members' legislation for a reason, and if the government members find themselves on this side of the table, on what happened here, you do not want to be part of that. I'll tell you why.
The government has had eight years to propose the types of amendments in here and they chose not to—number one—and the scope that was proposed in here was so beyond the original private member's bill that it really should have been government legislation or another private member's bill, but what happened was that the committee—the NDP and the Liberals—decided to override the Standing Orders and the procedures on how we dispose of and dispense with private members' legislation to expand the scope, because that didn't happen.
What happens to my colleagues, particularly in the government party, then, is that as legislators you're sitting here and dealing with amendments that are really significant, that we haven't had witness testimony to and, as well, that we haven't had departments testify to.
The other concern I want to re-emphasize in the deliberations on this bill and why it was so important to scrutinize these amendments is the leaks that happened and the breach of privilege. I understand that there are passionate stakeholders on this, but they're not elected officials. They may have opinions on this issue, but they're not representing the hundreds of thousands of people who we represent. Therefore, there should have been decorum and due process put in place, and due process wasn't followed in this instance.
We came into this all in agreement on passing this bill expeditiously, as it was in the Senate. My sense is that this is not going to be the case when it inevitably returns to the other place. I think that's unfortunate. I think what's happened here is that this is now a piece of legislation that is going to likely...not at my request or anything, but it's going to face more scrutiny and more holdups, probably because a couple of well-intentioned people thought they could break the rules and play fast and loose with the rules. That's really unfortunate because the substance either should have been in a government bill or not taken this way.
For those people who are listening, if that happens, it's because the rules weren't followed and the original deal and the original spirit of this bill were broken by an overreach. I find that really disappointing, and I think it has potentially negative outcomes for a lot of people, so I also echo my comments of my colleagues that this should not be reported.
Thank you.