Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Wentworth—Burlington.
I want to participate in the debate, having listened to the points raised. Perhaps I will start by responding to the member for Calgary—Nose Hill who, in answer to a question that I posed to her, suggested that somehow I was opposed to reforming the House. I want to repeat my statement for her.
My statement was that the reform would be necessary, to the point where it would add further constraints to the rights and privileges of members. I think that is different from reforming the House to have changes which will make us more productive. The idea is that we are all members of parliament. We enjoy certain rights and privileges. I would like to think that the fullest extent of those rights and privileges could be enjoyed by all members regardless of party.
The point I was trying to make was that we have opportunities to abuse our rights and privileges in this place. We can create literally hundreds of report stage motions. We can grind this place to a halt. We can put notices on the order paper for concurrence in committee reports. Every day when a bill is to come before the House for debate someone can rise on a concurrence motion and take up the time of the House simply to talk about anything that might have been talked about in a committee report. This place could grind to a halt.
Most members probably could think of a valid reason to stand on points of order, questions of privilege or points of information simply to take up a bit of time. It is not in our best interest, obviously. The best interest of all members is to use the time of the House and the resources that are available to us wisely. We are judged as a group on how wisely we use the time of this place.
The motion before the House has to do with a very serious matter. I concur that it is a serious allegation. I concur that something has to be looked at carefully, but I am wondering whether the arguments that have been made should to be put into two different contexts. One is the whole aspect of whether the points being raised by the people who would like to see something done are more directed at the problems they have with the governing party and with the strategies that the government uses in exercising the authority it has been given as opposed to the problems they have with our parliamentary process. I would put that on one side.
The other question is whether we are talking about the rules we will generally follow in regard to the macro picture of how we will deal in terms of the legislative counsel, the Journals branch and all of those resources we have, as opposed to considering this particular case. In this case one has to look at the substance of what was going on, the issue at hand and the strategy.
When I found out that there would be hundreds of motions before parliament at report stage on Bill C-20, it was clear to me, and clear to absolutely everybody, that it was a move of demonstration. It was simply a demonstration to handcuff the House and force it to go through a process.
Had there been 1,000 amendments we would have been here for three full days. It would not have achieved anything, other than keeping all members and people who support this place here. I am not sure that was a good use, so I looked at Beauchesne's. I have not looked at the new book, but I looked at Beauchesne's concerning report stage motions. It said that report stage motions were meant to allow members who were not on the committee an opportunity to have some input and influence on legislation. That is one of the reasons we have report stage motions.
I looked at what we were voting on and asked, how could it be? There were motions dealing with punctuation. There were literally hundreds of motions changing the same thing, adding a word here or there, which had nothing to do with the substance of the bill. I would have thought that maybe the Chair would have had the opportunity to simply say that they were not in the spirit in which report stage motions were intended and rule them out of order.
I just cannot see the whole issue of trying to tie up this place simply for a demonstration because some members will not get their way and the government will get its way. In a majority situation that is what happens.
The outcome of what took place here probably was the right outcome. It was the right outcome, in the best interests of this place and the people of Canada.
Mr. Speaker, in my six or seven years as a member of parliament, I have found that your wisdom and insight, trying not to apply rules on a rigid basis but trying to help us to be better parliamentarians, makes us all the better for it, and I will give you my support.