Mr. Speaker, it is important to clarify several facts, as the Speaker was not able to be at our committee last night.
One thing is that the member who made the intervention from the government side was not there either, but he may have been fed some wrong information.
Originally I sat at the committee table and proposed a motion about calling more witnesses. It had nothing to do with clause by clause. At that time it was pointed out to me that I had not submitted my form to the clerk about being a member of the committee. I immediately gave the sheet to the clerk of the committee and to the chair so that I could take part in the clause by clause voting.
After I had submitted my proper documentation to the clerk, and I am sure the Speaker will check with the clerk on this, then I moved my amendments. They were then ruled out of order and tossed away. I asked for them back and could not get them. I could not even get them. I had a stack of amendments. All of them were taken and they went into a black hole or wherever they go.
We were not restricted to five minutes per motion which would have been bad enough. It was five minutes per clause.
Even the government side had as many as three or four amendments per clause which were read out with an explanation and that was considered the total debate. It was not per motion, per amendment, or per subamendment. It was per clause. We passed entire sections, sometimes running an entire typewritten page in the bill, without a word of debate.
It cannot go on, Mr. Speaker. It is going on right now. Clauses are being passed without debate. You cannot allow that. I do not know what to do. I could go back there and stomp on the table, but they are just passing clause after clause without debate. It cannot continue.
My final point is it is interesting that the member mentioned that the committee did adjourn at 12.05 a.m. which is an admission that it did go past the hour of adjournment, not that it was not pointed out to the chairman. I brought attention to it in two different points of order that we had agreed to stop at midnight. The chair said we must continue with it. Another amendment was passed. I said that it was now really past midnight, it was five minutes after midnight. I said that I could not see that we could proceed. The chair hit the hammer and passed the amendment without even a vote. The amendment was passed without a vote.
How can you pass an amendment without a vote? You cannot do it. To say that this is somehow speeding up the procedure, I guess it is. Speeding up procedure does not involve trampling on the rights of members of Parliament who want to debate the clauses and have the right to bring amendments in both official languages. If members on the government side think they are appealing to some unknown masses out there by running roughshod over the rights of members of Parliament who have the privilege of bringing forward concerns from their constituents, it is hypocrisy, it is dictatorship, it is despotism and it is out of order.