Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of my colleague's remarks he referred to citation 317 of Beauchesne's to plead for the Speaker's intervention in the case. I should remind the Speaker that the reference to citation 317 was perhaps selective and should remind the Speaker of what it says. Citation 317(2) states:
A question of order concerns the interpretation to be put upon the rules of procedure and is a matter for the Speaker or, in a committee, for the Chairman to determine.
In other words, a reading of the complete citation tells the Speaker that this is an issue to be raised at the committee and not in the House.
In reference to the issue at hand, the membership of the committees in question, the issue was brought to the attention of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with the hon. member pleading the case that there should be an additional member of his particular political party on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in its wisdom decided that it had been customary and agreed at the beginning of this Parliament that the party which holds the chairmanship of the particular committee loses a member able to participate in the debate because the chairman customarily, as the Speaker knows more than anyone else in the House, does not participate too frequently in the debates. That was agreed to at the beginning of this Parliament, at the beginning of the previous Parliament and the one before it.
In each one of those prior Parliaments and in the present one the official opposition, which traditionally chairs the public accounts committee, has an additional member to compensate for the fact that it loses one member in the debate.
Finally the argument was made by myself at the procedure and House affairs committee that if we add another member from another party to the public accounts committee, we disturb the whole balance within the committee. We then have to add two Liberal members to the committee to achieve the balance we must start off with under the rule invoked by the hon. member in question.