moved
That the Standing Orders of the House be amended by adding the following:
"97.1 A standing, special or legislative committee to which a Private Member's public bill has been referred shall in every case either report the bill to the House with or without amendment or present to the House a report containing a recommendation not to proceed further with the bill and giving the reasons therefor."
Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to lead off debate on Motion No. 267. This motion is designed to continue parliamentary reform, a matter that began shortly after we came to this House in 1994 and has continued to the present day.
I want to begin by thanking the subcommittee on private members' business for deciding that Motion No. 267 should be votable. I also want to thank the member from Peace River who appeared before the subcommittee on my behalf and spoke so successfully that my motion should become votable.
As I said before, the motion is designed to continue the parliamentary reform, which has taken place already in this House of Commons. At the beginning of this Parliament, I argued in favour of freer voting by members of this House. I argued that the whips should not always be on government and opposition members, that there is nothing inherently wrong with members' voting occasionally against the party line.
Freedom of the private member had occupied a great amount of space in the seminal report on House of Commons reform. That report of the committee was chaired by the former member for St. John's east, Jim McGrath. He tabled it in this Chamber in June 1985.
In the ensuing years, little has been done to implement this part of the report. However, with a new Parliament with a decidedly new look it might be possible to introduce some freer voting.
After some debate, a motion was passed unanimously in this Chamber calling for freer votes, some bills to be sent to committee before second reading and other changes designed to give the private member some influence over the policy making process.
I am very pleased to say that we have made progress. I have never hesitated to give the government credit when it is due, and I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised that the government members have been freed up by the whips to vote as they like during Private Members' Business.
We have not yet reached the point where government members are free to vote against the party line with reference to government legislation. Unfortunately we are still faced with the scene of the Prime Minister disciplining members of caucus who have dared to vote contrary to the whip's orders.