Mr. Speaker, in connection with the point of order raised by our hon. colleague, the House leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, for all intents and purposes, it contains a number of elements, and I am totally in agreement with some of them but not with others.
When the House leader of the Progressive Conservative Party says that the Chair did not use his power, his prerogative to select amendments, I believe he is wrong. The total number of amendments tabled with journals branch is far higher than the figure of 2,133 you gave earlier. In other worlds, the Chair did exercise its discretionary power to select certain amendments and reject others.
The House leader of the Progressive Conservative Party took the trouble to point out that the essential reason for our finding ourselves in this situation today, and for a similar situation in the past, is the lack of openness of the government, its stubborness and its partisan manipulation of this parliament.
The government imagines it can use its majority in the House to impose anything it wants on this parliament. This closed-minded rigidity goes so far as to propose to us a bill so badly put together than even the government needs to amend it. It alone has proposed over 150 amendments to a bill than does not even contain 200 clauses.
This is indication that the government ought to have softened its position and agreed to withdraw its bill and to make the necessary changes. Instead of doing so, which would have forced it to admit it had made a mistake, it has decided to go ahead and to force parliament to examine its bill, imperfect as it is.
Here we have before this parliament today a far from perfect bill at report stage, with this government itself having to propose 150 amendments to it. As we have said and often repeated, this bill is not just imperfect in form but in substance as well.
While the reasons the government has decided to examine this bill may be justified in some areas of the country, they are certainly less justified in Quebec, where we have come to terms with juvenile delinquency by means other than those the minister is proposing today.
I respectfully submit to my colleague, the House leader of the Progressive Conservative Party that, with a bill erring in substance and not simply in form, it was to be expected that we would move amendments to correct not simply the form of the bill, but its substance as well. Not surprisingly we are tabling a great many amendments.
I repeat that it is very disrespectful toward the Chair to claim that it has not made a ruling, that it has not exercised discretion in excluding a number of amendments, because it has.
I would also be concerned that the Chair is being autocratic and discretionary to an extent beyond that permitted under the standing orders of the House and in deciding on the relevance of the amendments, as it has up to now.
If the House leader of the Progressive Conservative Party is right in saying that a tendency is developing to use report stage as a dilatory tactic in the passage of bills, it is not the opposition parties who are to be blamed. I would respectfully submit to him that he should not criticize the opposition parties for using this tactic but place the essence of the blame if not all of it squarely on the shoulders of the government, which for all intents and purposes compels the opposition parties to use such dilatory tactics because the government is not playing fairly or working constructively in its efforts to use this parliament for partisan purposes.