moved:
That section (5) of Standing Order 76 and section (5) of Standing Order 76.1 be amended by adding at the conclusion of the notes thereto the following:
For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the motion before us.
The purpose of this motion is straightforward. It is to reconfirm the authority of the Speaker to select motions for debate and, of course, for voting, at the report stage in the manner that was intended when our present legislative procedures were adopted some 32 years ago.
In my discussions with other House leaders, we have canvassed a wide variety of options that might be followed in the interest of making the report stage a more effective part of the legislative process. These included possible changes to the committee stage and to the time allocation rules, as well as changes to report stage rules.
But it became clear to me that such an approach more properly should be considered in the context of House of Commons modernization and that, today, we should simply confine ourselves to restating, as it were, the authority which the Speaker has always possessed or exercised in the 32 years we have had this procedure.
This left us today with a single issue, but a very confined one, that had become a problem for the House in recent years and I was convinced by some of my honourable friends opposite that I should confine my initiative to addressing that single point, which is what I am going to do.
In recent years successive Speakers have felt progressively less and less justified in exercising their authority, with the consequence that the report stage has been rendered vulnerable to unsatisfactory and, shall I say, clearly unintended uses.
In December, 1999, the House was obliged to spend 42 consecutive hours voting on 469 report stage motions, most of which were concocted for the sole purpose of delaying the House. Changing commas to semicolons, and attempting to obstruct the parliamentary process has nothing at all to do with democracy. That is not democracy; it is the opposite. And all members know it.