Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I will read from Beauchesne's 6th edition, pages 177 to 178:
A member, having proposed an amendment, and subsequently desiring to amend the same can do so only if the House allows the original amendment to be withdrawn, at which time the member may then propose a new amendment. It has been long accepted that government motions may be moved by any member of the Ministry.
Preceding this, I want to get into Beauchesne's again regarding the form and content of amendments and subamendments because this does get pretty ticklish in terms of what the government attempted to do. The subamendment is where I think the government got derailed in terms of its abuse of the rules. It says that a subamendment cannot be moved if it proposes to leave out all the words of the proposed amendment.
That is up to the House, or the Chair, to decide. They are referring to Journals March 8, 1937, page 208; Journals November 29, 1944, page 934; Journals March 14, 1947, page 198.
Second, a subamendment must be relevant to the amendment it purports to amend, and not to the main motion, referring to Journals January 18, 1973, page 49.
Third, further on it points out that a subamendment which proposes an alternative to the original amendment is in order provided it is relevant to the question, which I believe this is not, referring to Journals June 23 and 24, 1926, pages 465, 468.
Fourth, when the House has negatived a subamendment to strike out certain other words in a proposed amendment, it is in order to move another subamendment to insert other words than those used in the original subamendment, referring to Debates June 19, 1925, page 4554.
And on and on we go. I will now go back to page 178 in the 6th edition of Beauchesne's , regarding withdrawal of motions and amendments. I will go through this step by step, clause by clause. I think we have a case for this one. Just bear with me.
The member who has proposed a motion may withdraw it only with the unanimous consent of the House.
We touched on that.
An amendment may be withdrawn with the unanimous consent of the House, but neither a motion nor an amendment can be withdrawn with the—