Mr. Speaker, I wish to add to this point of privilege.
It may be a small thing to some people, but normally in the course of our day's Routine Proceedings, bills are routinely brought before the House of Commons, the elected house in this Parliament, for printing and for examination.
The bills which are introduced in the Senate are not introduced that way to this body. We only see them after the fact, after debate of whatever depth and degree that the other place decides. Only then are they brought to this House for consideration.
The standing orders have gone through an evolution since I have been here. For example, on referral after first reading, we have tried to increase the influence of this place and of ordinary members on legislation in committees and otherwise in an attempt to bring the new political reality we are all talking about to bear on the 1990s and into the next millennium.
The practice that is obviously taking place now, which is to short circuit the normal, the average, the common way of introducing bills by sending them off to the Senate to be talked over and agreed to in the old boys club and then brought here only after it is a done deal is an affront to Parliament. I think it is affecting our privileges as the elected body in this Parliament.