How was it that he was not available to debate it or, as the member across said, deliberately withdraw it?. That is even worse after having proposed it, given that he was the boss of his party and speaking on behalf of his party.
I do not understand all of these things, but then again I do not have a Reform mindset and maybe that is why. I cannot think like a Reformer and hopefully I never will.
Now, the Reform members' boss wanted to reintroduce private members bills, those from opposition members as well as those from government members, even though, traditionally, private members bills are mainly an instrument used by the opposition to advocate certain measures. We liked the idea and we wanted to apply it to bills from opposition as well as government members using the very formula proposed by the hon. member from Lethbridge, that is that a bill that was merely introduced in the
House would not automatically be reactivated. Likewise, a bill that was before the Senate would not automatically be reinstated. But bills that were still before the House and had passed second reading could be, under this formula.
Let us remember the other point. This is enabling and it does not in itself cause the bill to be reactivated. In other words, if I had a private member's bill, which I do not as the whip, presently before a committee, if the government had already dealt with the issue and solved the problem, which the government so often does, and if I felt my private member's bill was now redundant, it would not be automatically reinstated. In other words, it simply enables a member who feels his or her private member's bill is still important enough to merely cause it to go back to the point it was at prior to prorogation.
This is remarkable because it mirrors what the boss of the Reform Party, the hon. member for Lethbridge, was asking us to do.