Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order concerning Motion No. 1. I think you will have to agree with the point I intend to make, which is that this motion is out of order.
I would refer to arguments made by the present government in 1991, when it was in the opposition, in response to a motion presented by the Progressive Conservative Party, the government party at the time, when it wanted to resurrect measures that had died on the Order Paper when the House was prorogued.
At the time, the Conservative motion listed the bills in question and, if I remember correctly, there were six. The Liberal opposition argued that a general motion could not be debated and that the House would have to proceed item by item, motion by motion and bill by bill. I realize that, in this case, the government has avoided the pitfalls of the motion it condemned at the time by not specifying the bills it wants back on the Order Paper. The government is trying to resurrect all the bills that died on the Order Paper instead of taking them one by one.
I would like to recall some of the statements that were made at the time. Mind you, all this was item by item. Speaker Fraser finally agreed with the arguments put forward by the opposition. These included, and I am reminded of what was said by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier at the time-his successor just made an eloquent speech-who is now a senator, who condemned this approach, referring to it as a legislative mess, and who called hon. members opposite-who were sitting where I am now but are sitting opposite today-government bullies. It seems to me that borders on the unparliamentary, but apparently it was accepted by the Chair.
The government is trying to do exactly the same thing today, but in a roundabout way. It is are trying to accomplish indirectly what it cannot accomplish directly. I realize that the government members have realized that their arguments were not totally convincing, since the approach has been an item by item approach, even if that had been condemned, as seen by the statements I just quoted.
Nevertheless, the approach has been item by item, bill by bill. When the official opposition was consulted by the government, it was made clear to the government that we were prepared to examine each bill on its merits and that we would agree to a certain number of them. I am thinking, for instance, of the bill of my colleague for Québec making excision illegal. We are, of course, prepared to resume examination of that bill where we left it last December, but it would take a lot of gall to assume that we would agree to re-examine the Axworthy reform as the Young reform. There are limits.
On these grounds I would ask you to consider this motion as not in order, as you cannot do otherwise, based on the arguments put forth several years ago by the government party in terms far more crude than mine.