Mr. Speaker, my question of privilege arises out of the motion that the government intends to move with respect to time allocation on Bill C-2. It has to do with what I regard to be the responsibilities of the Chair to protect the rights and privileges of members of this House of Commons to engage in adequate debate on matters of national importance.
The Chair will know that the time allocation motion has to do with the amendments to the Canada pension plan. This is a national social program, an income security plan which is very rarely before the House, very rarely debated, very rarely amended. This is one of those occasions when it is being amended, therefore, it is a unique opportunity for members of the House of Commons to put their views on the record on what our national pension plan system should look like. We will disagree with each other about that. The Reform Party will have its position, as will the NDP. The government will have its position, as reflected in the legislation.
My concern is that the Chair consider, before seeing whoever it is who will be moving the motion on behalf of the government—we have notice that the motion will be moved—not seeing the mover of the motion as a way of using the power of the Chair to intervene on behalf of members of Parliament, both collectively and individually, in a situation where our right to adequate debate is being violated by the government's rush to judgment on the appropriateness of time allocation.
Others have said in the course of comments during question period that somehow the amendments that were moved by the opposition were an attempt to close off debate. Quite the contrary. We know these motions are procedurally designed in such as way, whether a six-month hoist or whatever, and are often moved in order to create the possibility of more debate so that the government cannot move to the question on the main motion.
It is a bit disingenuous for the government to say that this was an attempt to close off debate. It was, rather, to prevent or to act in a preventive way against the government moving to the question right away by not putting up speakers.
An amendment was moved, a subamendment was moved and right after the subamendment was moved the government gave notice of closure. How long did we debate this motion? We debated it for one day. We did not debate it the next day in the morning because we were debating Bill C-4. Then we moved to Bill C-2 and we were hardly into the second or third hour and the government moved closure.
Mr. Speaker, I know that for you to do something about this would be to break with Canadian precedent. I am aware of the significance of what I am asking you to do. I have only asked a Speaker to do this once before and it was Speaker Fraser in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But you will know that at Westminster and in other Parliaments, Speakers have sometimes taken upon themselves the responsibility of ensuring that the rights of Parliament collectively are not abused by a government which moves too quickly to closure or to time allocation.
It is precisely what I am asking you to consider here today, that this is an occasion where very early in this Parliament there is no reason to believe that the debate would have gone on and on. All we wanted was an opportunity to have our amendments considered, to have a full airing of the subject, which is what second reading used to be before we got the kind of rule changes that we got in a previous Parliament in 1991 and which this government having condemned these changes now uses to the full.
I think it is the wrong way to start off this Parliament. We were doing just fine. We were getting along even though we disagree with each other politically. For the government to move at this time as I suggested earlier is a very unfortunate thing. But it is an unfortunate thing that could be remedied by the Chair taking, admittedly, new responsibilities but not responsibilities that are totally out of character with what Speakers have done in other Parliaments, to intervene on behalf of the collective rights of parliamentarians to adequate debate on a matter of obvious national importance.
Mr. Speaker, I rest my case and I ask you to consider the matter and to consider it urgently because obviously if you were to intervene you would have to do it when the motion was about to be moved. Sometimes Speakers can be given to a judicious blindness when it comes to motions being moved or to breaking new ground by actually arriving at a judgment on this in time to prevent this very unfortunate reaction on the part of the government to the fact that there was lively, informed and concerned debate about CPP reform and it moved to choke it off in the way that it did.