Mr. Speaker, it takes some twisted logic to reach the conclusions I have just heard from the hon. member across the floor. The non-confidence reads as follows:
That this House resolve that it no longer has confidence in its Speaker, since it is of the opinion that he showed partiality—
This is what is in the non-confidence motion. If it were the type of motion the hon. member has described, then it would not be a non-confidence motion, but something else again. Coming from the members, a motion could be formulated along these lines “That this House change the organization of its legislative counsel; or that this House change the method by which legislative counsel interacts with the clerk” or some such thing.
This is an interesting debate, but it has no connection with the non-confidence motion. That is why I am saying that, at the end of the day, this non-confidence motion might be withdrawn, because it is the wrong approach.
If the objective is what the hon. member has just described to us, I hope he and his colleagues will ask the House to withdraw it. This gesture of unanimity—for it will require unanimous consent to do so—will in itself express the confidence we have in you.
Second, the hon. member's response to another part of the question is “It is not a debate about getting extra resources”. Well now, I am quoting the hon. member for Roberval, who was speaking about getting the necessary resources; I quickly jotted down what he was saying. That may not have been the purpose of the motion as moved by the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, but the member who shared his speaking time referred to this as one of the reasons why this non-confidence motion was before us.
I am therefore asking the hon. member to look later on at today's Hansard to see what his own colleagues had to say, because that is exactly what this is all about.
I will be affirming my confidence in you later on today, Mr. Speaker.