That is the discourse we have just heard. You did not perhaps write it yourself, but that is what we heard. It is backward and antidemocratic and its purpose is to prevent members from doing their work seriously.
Forcing a committee to table a report in the House is the least of it. The committee should examine the bill. The member has left, and he will be even more furious if he hears this from his office, but I am going to propose an amendment shortly, at the end of my speech, to force committees to work to reasonable deadlines.
I think it is extremely important that they stop making fun of people. We are here as legislators. What matters is that we make legislation. The government makes legislation, imposes gags, goes to committee, expedites studies, clause by clause. We can have bills with 272 clauses, like the one we have just debated on the GST. The government has done its work so badly that it is proposing 100 amendments in committee that we must examine one after the other. Even at the very last minute, before tabling the report in the House, they found a way to table another 13 amendments.
What has happened to Bill C-234 is simply disgraceful. The House sent this bill to committee. The committee was to examine it clause by clause and we do not even know if the committee did its work. It never reported back to the House. We are not asking the committee to agree with the bill, but it is not up to a few individuals sitting around a table in a committee with a government majority to decide if the bill deserves to go to second reading, third reading, the Senate or royal assent. It is not up to three, four, five or six Liberals to decide for 295 members. This is the forum for democracy. It is
here that we must sit. It is not up to the committee to decide for everyone else.
The decision has to be made here. And I think it is too bad the hon. member for Fundy-Royal decided to argue in favour of the motion. However, he did not manage to convince me, because I could not go along with what he had to say.
The question of privilege raised by the Reform Party is, in my opinion, essential to the problem. Unfortunately, the Chair rendered an impartial ruling, very middle-of-the-road, saying that our rights were not breached when a committee decided to keep our bill. But this may be a way for committee to sabotage a service that is available to every member of this House: to introduce private members' bills.
So there should be a way to force the committee to report back to the House. Private members' bills often address issues raised by constituents who want the matter dealt with through legislation. Or maybe they reflect the concerns of members, of a party, of a group of people, a riding, a region, whatever. But we must not forget that if we are here to pass legislation, we also have the right to draft private members' bills. We have the right to debate them in this House, and we have the right to take them through all stages until eventually they can become law.
To kill a bill in committee shows an utter lack of respect for the members of this House and for our constituents who sent us here to work for them. It is also a way to gag the opposition. All sorts of ways to muzzle the opposition have been found, and now another one has been developed: bills sent to committee are left to die there. Sometimes they die on the Order Paper. This one will die in committee-it will be given a first class burial in committee-and a committee, we must remember, comprises a majority of government members.
This is also a way to kill a bill of a member of government who has introduced a private member's bill that does not suit the government. So it gets muzzled too. We are talking about an ordinary backbencher, whose opinion differs from that of the majority, so arrangements are made for his bill to remain in committee.
Statistics show that, since the Liberals formed the government in 1993, fewer private bills have come to a vote in the House. Things were better under the Conservatives. So it is important that the government realize that opposition members are just as entitled as government members to avail themselves of the possibility of introducing private member's bills.
Of course, the government wants to avoid dissension within caucus and it does not want this dissension to become public. We saw this recently with a bill introduced by a member of the majority; the majority of members voted in favour of this bill, leading to dissension within the government. The ministers, in particular, did not want to vote in favour of this bill.
So I feel it is important to point out that, in the motion presented by the Reform Party member, all that is being requested in the end is a change to the Standing Orders.
A standing, special or legislative committee to which a Private Member's public bill has been referred must in every case either report the bill to the House with or without amendment. How has it been examined? What are the results of this study in committee? Let it provide us with a report.
If the report says that the members of a committee have thoroughly studied the bill and that it is not logical, would be too costly, or ought not to be proceeded further with, the committee would be entitled to do this. The members of the House would learn to work very seriously in this connection and would take committee reports seriously.
If only it was felt that the government was open to having all members, even the backbenchers on its side, work on improving the legislation we have, in order to solve the problems we are experiencing in each of our ridings.
The committee would be required to make a report, to present to the House a report in which it would recommend whether or not to proceed further with the bill and give the reasons for recommending the one course of action over than the other.
I hope that we shall debate this motion and that the necessary lobbying of all members will be done to ensure that they really understand the meaning and importance of this motion. The Bloc Quebecois is in favour of this motion and we are adding an amendment.
I move:
That the motion be amended by adding after the words "in every case" the following: ", within six months from the date of the bill's reference to the committee,".
We are adding to the Reform member's motion the words "within six months". Let me explain our amendment. After six months, the committee must report to the House. Its report could say that it had not finished its examination. This gives enough leeway to allow follow up on all bills tabled in the House in order to develop a more open-minded atmosphere and mechanisms which would encourage democracy.