Madam Speaker, the member raises a very good point here. The part of his address I want to deal with is the statement he made that this basically overrides the rights of the legislators.
Members of our statutory instruments and regulations committee brought that very point up about three weeks ago, that the flaw did exist in the bill. The government recognized this was an override. We believe our amendment deals with this in a constructive way so legislators are not bypassed. I believe my colleague critic from the Reform Party shares that view.
I want to say something to the member dealing with this whole notion of overriding legislators. The Prime Minister, whom I have had the pleasure of working with since 1980, who has come up through the ranks as a parliamentary secretary, a young MP, is very sensitive to making sure the individual roles of legislators in this House of Commons are meaningful.
The Prime Minister has stated this on several occasions. It is part of the red book. We do not come to this city day in, weekend in and weekend out, making sacrifices with our families and friends to be subservient to unelected officials or bureaucrats. That is why our committee process has reached in my judgment a new level of reform.
Our committees are almost independent now. I would not want to say we are totally independent because the government obviously has a majority in terms of the members. There is a push by the Prime Minister to encourage MPs to develop their ideas, to get control of their own agenda and do what they believe in.
I believe the amendment we proposed in committee meets the concerns the member from the Bloc raised in his address. We would be supporting our own motion and we therefore would not be supporting his.