Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief and address the point. If I understood correctly, what the hon. member is trying to get at is that he has now recognized that the passage by rather surreptitious means yesterday afternoon of a report does not change the standing orders the way he initially thought it did and now he is asking the Speaker to change them unilaterally. That is what I understand his point to be.
I read the eight clauses of the committee and my reading tells me that six of them require an actual drafting of rule changes. The drafting presumably would have to be approved by the House afterwards because draft rule changes are not in six of the eight items that refer to particular changes. The other ones I recognize are matters which are under the purview of the Speaker or the administration of the House, but six of them have particularly to do with the rule changes.
If the hon. member across sees fit to raise this issue with the Speaker, it is because he has recognized that this artificial way of getting this motion through yesterday did not change the rules the way he initially thought it did, otherwise he would not have to bring it up right now. Now he has asked if the Speaker or others will arrange to have actual words put in place in time for the House to come back.
Mr. Speaker, if Your Honour, the clerk or anyone else around here wants to prepare draft rule changes, that is certainly their prerogative. My submission to the Chair respectfully is that once those draft rule changes have been prepared by the Chair, assuming that the Chair would be so inclined, it would be up to the House to decide whether or not it likes those draft rule changes. If it does, subsequently it would adopt those draft rule changes if and when it sees fit to do so.
The mere fact that the member has raised this today in the House does not change the rules of the House. Heaven forbid if we ever get into a situation where one member of the Reform Party decides himself to change the rules for the rest of us around here, democracy would take a beating that day.