Mr. Speaker, I would like to add one or two points on this point of privilege. As has already been mentioned and as you can tell today, many members have written to you and have expressed this problem with the privileges of all members of the House, not just in the Reform caucus, although certainly we are bringing it to your attention.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot overemphasize the need for you to deal with this very seriously, as I know you will. Each of us goes to a lot of work on these private members' bills. I have two more coming out of a 15,000 name petition which will come to the House. That is why we treat them seriously, and I know that you do.
The only other point I could add to this, which has been well stated already, is that there is also the established practice of the House. As you are well aware, when you are presented with two amendments at report stage, one calling for the deletion of an entire clause and one calling for an amendment of a clause, you group those together, we debate them together and that is the way they are dealt with.
However, you always call the question on the deletion before the amendment. In other words, you let the House decide if it wants to delete it entirely or if it wants to amend it. In this case, what has happened in committee is that we are not able in the House to deal with whether the House wants to delete it in its entirety and deal only with an amendment. Our chance to debate that, discuss that and vote on it has been taken away from us because it has been deleted in committee and we have not had that chance to vote.
I ask that, taking the established practice Speakers have worked with in the past, you work with that to see that it is a case of privilege that we have not been able to discuss the points that we should be able to here in the House. Our privileges have been contravened.