Standing Order 108 and other standing orders of this House are clear in that regard. Therefore, it is my submission that the chair should not be ruling on this at this time. However, in the unlikely event that the chair does decide to rule on this issue at this time, I want to make representation to the Speaker in regard to the substance of the alleged point of privilege.
First, there has been an allegation made today that there was some sort of an attempt to prevent the member from speaking on and studying this bill thoroughly. This bill has been the subject of study for five months. Yesterday alone, the committee sat for over six hours and adjourned at 12.05 this morning. This hardly sounds like an attempt by anyone to stifle debate.
The next thing that is important to add at this point is that yes, it is true that an hon. member of the committee did propose to limit the time of debate per motion. That was not a government attempt. It was a member of the opposition. Therefore an accusation that the government is trying to stifle the opposition would not be totally accurate. In fact, the motion in question, which duly carried, was proposed by an opposition member and carried by the committee as a whole.
On the issue of the motions, it should be noted that there were a number of amendments proposed yesterday. As a matter of fact, I am told that some 40 amendments had been proposed prior to the committee sitting yesterday. And yesterday amendments in a stack several times thicker than the original bill were proposed by one member.
At the first occasion on which the amendments were proposed, the member in question was not a duly signed member of the committee. Therefore all the amendments he proposed were out of order because the member had no standing before the committee. Later on the member was afforded an opportunity to become a duly signed member of the committee as per our rules. In other words, his whip signed him in. I understand at that point he was able to move the amendments.
If I can speak to the issue of the amendments and the language for a moment, it is true of course that the House and its committees have permitted and will permit an amendment to be produced in only one of the two official languages. We have done that before. But it is equally true that a substantial document of the House must be, not only because of the Standing Orders but because of elementary courtesy, produced in both official languages, because our rules make it such and simply because of the volume, in order to enable all members to participate.
May I suggest that when someone moves a stack of amendments several times thicker than the bill itself, that rule then must apply as well. In other words, several hundreds or dozens of amendments should be translated, again in order to accommodate all members of the House to participate. It is not a matter of one or two amendments where one member can listen to the interpretation system and hear the three or four words proposed to be amended. We are talking here of hundreds and perhaps thousands of words being amended in a particular bill. That courtesy was judged by the chair of the committee to be essential to the good functioning of the committee and ultimately of the House.
I am told the chair did rule as well that some, if not a large number, of the amendments were not substantive but were dilatory in nature and nothing else. I am told, as an example, that someone wanted to exempt people working in restaurants from being obliged to hire people of different ethnicities and so on. Mr. Speaker, you have already recognized that is not even in the area of federal jurisdiction. An amendment such as that and several others, according to the committee, had little or no purpose other than to stall the process of the committee after five months of deliberations and six hours of sitting in one day. The purpose was not at all to amend the bill.
Finally, the committee did adjourn nominally at five minutes past midnight. That was invoked as part of the alleged point of privilege. The House will know that adjourning five minutes later than the usual time when there is general agreement on the committee is not exactly something unprecedented in order to complete the business before the committee.
After three hours of debate on one clause of the bill the committee judged it was for the betterment of the committee that a time limit of five minutes per clause was appropriate. The committee decided that by virtually unanimous consent, with the exception of one or two members. The committee did make that decision with full democratic principles in mind, as it had the wisdom and the right to do.
The committee has not yet reported to this House. When it does report to the House, any member who was not a member of the committee-as is the case of the hon. member who proposed the amendments initially-is perfectly in order to produce amendments again at report stage, if the Speaker and his very able staff determine the amendments are in order.
Therefore, in my view there is no point of privilege. Even if the points raised by the hon. member were valid-and I submit they are not-this would not constitute a point of privilege now but only at a later date.
I believe hon. members worked very hard on that committee. I know the hon. member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and several other members have worked very hard. They stayed up very late last night to continue the work after five months of deliberation.
Perhaps some people are not in agreement with the bill. That will not change by invoking points of privilege in this House, which are not really points of privilege at all, and even if they had been, they were not invoked at the appropriate time. I submit the chair of the committee ruled properly with the able advice of his clerk and staff, and did make the committee function to advance the legislation before the committee, as is the role of the chair. He did nothing different from the usual work of a committee chair. I am sure I speak on behalf of most members of this House when I say he is an outstanding committee chair.