Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few remarks tonight before we reach the end of our time. I thought the quality of the debate tonight was rather good and I think most of us have had a chance to share our views on the issue in front of us.
I want to address what I think is a bit of historical perspective on this: how we got here from there and why we are dealing with this particular rule change. I want to suggest that it really is not much of a rule change at all. I am sure all members have read the existing rule, which says very clearly that the Speaker “shall have the power to select amendments to be proposed at report stage”.
Mr. Speaker, you already have the power to select amendments at report stage. The problem is that the Speaker is not selecting amendments at report stage. The Speaker will group them for a vote or group them for debate, but the Speaker is not selecting.
Why is the Speaker not selecting now? The Speaker is not selecting now because 20 or 30 years ago a Speaker decided that he or she would not do any selection. As the practice evolved, we ended up with many amendments. The Speaker still did not select proposed amendments, and we ended up in this box at the present time where we have 400, 500 or 3,000 amendments, as the Speaker was not using the power that he or she had under the existing rules. This could keep us voting for days or even weeks solid, 24 hours a day. The House went through this a year or two ago and it was clear to all members that we could not continue this.
So we may ask ourselves, if the Speaker already has the power to select amendments for debate, which means excluding proposed amendments, why do we have to move this little change to the rules? The reason, I believe, is that the Speaker felt boxed in by the previous evolving practice and did not want to make a move to alter what had been an evolution of the practice.
During one of the marathon voting nights that occurred in the House, during the clarity bill, I believe, a year or two ago, I happened to be in Westminster. I felt perhaps fortunate not to be here at that time. I was in the U.K. parliament. When word of this marathon voting procedure came up over there, MPs and clerks there asked me what was happening. They did not understand. Even I could not understand. I could not explain to them how our House had allowed this procedure to evolve to the point where we could have 10,000 report stage amendments. There was no restriction in our rules. Over time, Speakers simply appear to have accepted that it did not matter whether there was 1 amendment or 100 or 1,000 or perhaps even 10,000.
At that point I inquired into the U.K. situation. Normally under rules similar to our own and a practice similar to ours, which says that the Speaker shall select for debate, the Speaker purges all amendments that may be described as frivolous, vexatious, repetitive or unnecessarily prolonging the process.
All we have done here is propose for greater clarity for the Speaker a rule of thumb that will allow him or her finally to select on a basis that will exclude the frivolous, the vexatious or the unduly prolonging.
The opposition thinks it is being prevented from doing that. I—