Debates of Feb. 27th, 2001

Standing Orders

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Speaker]

Call in the members.

Before the taking of the vote:

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I just received information on what we are voting on. Is this the 70th time we will have closure in the House?

[The Speaker]

I am afraid the Speaker does not keep count so I cannot answer the hon. member. I think this is the first time when I have been in the chair as Speaker that this has happened, if that helps the hon. member.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Division No. 12

[The Speaker]

I declare the motion carried.

Business Of The House

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As discussed at the parliamentary leaders' meeting, I would like to request the unanimous consent of this House to move the following motion:

That Bill C-209, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (Public Transportation Costs), be referred after second reading to the Standing Committee on Finance as opposed to the Standing Committee on Transport and Government Operations.

An error occurred when the bill was added to the order paper, and I believe I would have the consent of the House to correct it.

[The Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you seek it, I believe you would find unanimous consent that the vote on Bill C-11, deferred earlier this day until the end of government orders tomorrow, instead be considered at the end of government orders today.

[The Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent to change the time as indicated by the chief government whip?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from Febuary 26 consideration of the motion and of the amendment.

Standing Orders

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my intention in the three minutes that I have to prove the odiousness of the situation this government is forcing upon us in the House of Commons.

It has just forced us into something unacceptable, closure on closure. Here we are debating a motion whose aim is essentially to reduce the role of the opposition in this House and to prevent us from tabling amendments to bills under consideration, as we have done in the past.

And so, after three hours of debate on this important issue—the amendment of the standing orders, a change in the balance of the parliamentary powers of the two sides of this House—the government invokes closure. Three hours of debate on a matter of such importance, a change to the standing orders, and the government decides we have talked too much.

How else should we understand this approach other than to assume that the government is now on a very slippery slope? Not only are we seeing the government's arrogance following the election, an election no one could justify holding in any case, in a sort of mandate the government has drawn for itself from the public to support all of its initiatives, not only have we had over the past few days meaningless responses during oral question period, but now we do not even have any ministers present in the House to answer questions.

I have only one minute left, but how can I say in the space of one minute how awful a situation the government has put us in?

The government does not want to debate any more. It is refusing to debate with the opposition. It sees itself as the calm centre of truth. It refuses to remove its blinders to see what the people we represent want. It has decided to impose closure in the most awful way possible, that is, by forcing us to play a partisan role and rule on the merits of the amendments we put forward.

I would invite you, Mr. Speaker, to turn your attention first and foremost to the 200 amendments the government itself has put forward in respect of its own bill on young offenders. Perhaps you will find some of them useless.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to finally get a few words in edgewise on this particular motion, although I understand the passion of the hon. member for Elk Island when it comes to these things and the fact that he had at his disposal what I have never had in the House, that is, the temptation of unlimited time. He used it well in going after the government for the perfidy of this motion.

I was particularly struck myself by the way in which the government House leader attempted to use, or misuse shall we say, the McGrath committee report of 1985 to justify what he was doing yesterday when he moved Motion No. 2.

For the benefit of those who do not know what we are debating and do not know what we just imposed closure on, and because I actually had some Liberal members ask me prior to the vote what it was they were voting on, let me just say that this is a motion that would enable the Speaker to select amendments which would come to a vote at report stage rather than having, as is the practice that has developed, all the amendments that are submitted by members put to a vote.

Motion No. 2, which would have the effect of eliminating the strategy used both by the Bloc and the Reform in the last parliament, is a motion which comes forward by itself without any other parliamentary reform and is a measure that is designed to address only the government's concerns in this regard. It is one of the reasons why I find it so offensive. It is not parliamentary reform when only the concerns of the government are addressed.

Motion No. 2 would correct a problem that the government sees as a problem, and a problem that I think we all see as a problem. However, the problem is that this is not the only problem and it cannot be solved all by itself without creating a whole lot of other problems.

Let me just quote from the McGrath committee. The government House leader referenced the fact that I am the only surviving member in the House of that special committee on reform of the House of Commons, the only one left on the parliamentary reform island. It says this on page 38 of the McGrath report:

We believe that the report stage is not used constructively. The report stage was introduced into the legislative process as part of the procedural reforms implemented in 1968. One of the results of those reforms was the reference of the majority of bills to standing committees following second reading. The report stage was designed to provide opportunities to members not involved in the committee stage of a bill to propose amendments when the committee reported the bill back to the House. Thus, an MP that was not a member of the committee dealing with the bill would not be deprived of the right to propose amendments. It was also designed to enable the government to introduce last-minute technical amendments. It was not envisioned, however, that the report stage should provide a means of reopening the entire committee proceedings.

So far so good. I would say the government and the opposition are literally and metaphorically on the same page here when it comes to report stage, but then the committee report goes on to say:

The practice of using the report stage as an obstructive tactic—

This is something which the government objects to and has now moved to address as a result of the report stage becoming an even more obstructive tactic than it was when the McGrath committee reported, because when the McGrath committee reported we had not had the experience of hundreds and hundreds, or indeed thousands, of amendments being moved. Rather, we had only experienced report stage with perhaps 150 to 200 amendments.

Going back to the report:

—has developed because of the frustration of the opposition parties with the manner in which controversial bills are frequently dealt with at the committee stage. The report stage has become, in the words of one member, a vehicle for vengeance, a method of retaliation against what is seen as a stubborn refusal by government to make any concessions to opposition views when amendments are proposed in committee.

The recommendations we propose regarding the report stage should be seen in the overall context of reform of the legislative process.

There are the key words: the recommendations we propose. They went on to propose something like what the government House leader has put before the House, saying that the recommendations

should be seen in the overall context of reform of the legislative process.

However, what we have here is one recommendation, isolated from the overall legislative context the McGrath committee talked about, and proposed as a measure adequate in and of itself.

My argument today with the government is that this is totally out of keeping with the recommendations of the McGrath report, because what was the overall context of reform of the legislative process that we find in this report and in the context of which the McGrath committee said it would be okay for the Speaker to resume the power of selecting amendments for voting at report stage? The context was part of an overall package of parliamentary reform in which the committee process, particularly that process having to do with dealing with legislation, was to be de-partisanized as much as possible.

In fact, legislation would not go to standing committees at all. Legislation would go to special legislative committees which were to be chaired by chairpersons who were selected from a panel of chairpersons selected from all parties. We actually tried that for a while. That system was in place here for a number of years and a number of opposition members developed good reputations as good and fair chairs of committees.

It was that context of sending legislation off to committees that would be chaired in some cases by opposition members, but in all cases by people selected because of their known reputation for fairness. That is why they were selected to be chairs of these special legislative committees, instead of having been selected as standing committee chairs often are now, that is, because of their loyalty to the government.

These would be committees on which we would not have parliamentary secretaries acting as coaches to the government members, telling them what to do and playing the role of thought police and reporting back to the minister in case anyone had an independent thought. These were to be entirely different sorts of committees. They were to be committees that were seen as a departure from the very kind of system we now have and which we returned to at a certain point in the eighties as a result of the fact that the Mulroney government got tired of parliamentary reform and took back some of the reforms that it had been willing to try in the early years of its mandate.

The current prime minister suffers no such idealism, either early or late in his mandate. He is not even willing to give things a try. What we have here is an attempt by the government House leader to do exactly the wrong thing when it comes to parliamentary reform, to address only those things that are of concern to the government and to dress it up as if it is a concern of all parliamentarians.

Of course it is a concern of all parliamentarians that we should be reduced to the spectacle of voting throughout 24 hours or 48 hours. I do not think any of us felt good about that, either physically or in terms of how we thought the Canadian public viewed that particular exercise.

However, it remains the case that this does arise out of legitimate frustration on the part of the opposition, even though I did not agree with the Reform Party's position on Nisga'a and I did not agree with the Bloc Quebecois when it came to Bill C-20, the clarity bill. That is beside the point as far as I am concerned. The fact is that the government was not willing to permit the kind of debate that both these parties thought was appropriate to the significance of those particular issues.

I recall that when it came to Bill C-20, the clarity bill, the way in which the government conducted itself on that particular issue was particularly abhorrent. We not only suffered closure here in the House, but we suffered closure in committee. We were given only a couple of weeks to consider a tremendously significant piece of legislation with respect to how our country might some day be negotiated away, God forbid. Yet this was all supposed to happen within a very short time framework. Witnesses who should have been heard were not. Members of committee from the government side were openly lamenting the fact that they could not do their job properly.

It is in response to all this that from time to time the opposition decides it is going to use whatever procedural loopholes exist to wreak a certain kind of parliamentary and political vengeance on the government. It is not that effective. It is not something that yielded the Bloc a whole lot more votes in Quebec, as far as I can make out, in the election on November 27. Nor did it did lead to a breakthrough on the part of the reform-alliance party. These things do not have any great political virtue in the big picture.

However, here we are talking about parliamentary reform. We are talking about parliamentary culture. It is wrong for the government to insist that only its problems, only its frustrations with the current set-up, are the ones that must receive immediate attention. I am disappointed that the government House leader did not try to craft even a small package. It would not have had to cover the whole gamut of parliamentary reform and all the things that we could properly be considering if we were trying to put together the package on parliamentary reform. However, it could have addressed some of the concerns members of the opposition have, for instance, with respect to time allocation.

In the dying days of the last parliament there were discussions about creating some kind of mechanism whereby if the government wanted to move time allocation on a particular motion, at least the minister responsible for that piece of legislation would be answerable to the House for a couple of hours as to why it was so important that this legislation had to go through right away. That might have been one thing the government could have done. There are others.

One of the things we find is that in some respects not much has changed, because I am using the language of the McGrath committee of 16 years ago all over again. Significant legislation is not dealt with properly in the House. In fact, there seems to be a kind of inverse relationship. The more significant the legislation is, the less properly it is dealt with.

If legislation dealing with dog licences were in our jurisdiction, we would take all kinds of time with that. The legislation would be given to a committee which would take its time, call witnesses, hear from dogs, whatever. The committee would travel around the country. However, if it is something like the clarity bill or the Nisga'a agreement or the Canada pension plan reform, and the list goes on, if we have two days of debate, wow. Imagine two days of debate in parliament. We would have two days of debate on something significant, but four days of debate on something insignificant.

That is the record of the government. The more significant it is, the more the government wants to whisk it off, get it off the floor of the House of Commons, get it into committee and turn it over to the trained seals. The government will not be open and will not listen to amendments. Then it will bring back the legislation and expect the opposition to be in a good mood when we get to report stage.

We are not in a good mood by the time we get to report stage, if we have had time allocation on second reading and if we have had a committee process that has been time allocated itself, as it was with Bill C-20. We are not in a good mood by the time we get to report stage and we should not be. We have a right not to be because we do not feel that things have been dealt with properly. Sometimes we see the kind of tactics the government is moving now to address.

I am not against, in principle, the Chair having the power to select amendments. I never have been. I signed the McGrath report. I have cited other instances. On other occasions I have argued that the Speaker should have this power. I have also argued, Mr. Speaker, that you, the Chair, should have the power to do something about the abuses against parliament committed by the government, not just by the opposition. The Chair should have the power to refuse time allocations, if that time allocation comes at a time when there has not been sufficient debate.

If the motion had some balance to it, if it had given the Speaker discretion over government abuse, government tactics, government misuse of procedural loopholes, at the same time as it did the same for the opposition, then maybe members might have heard a different speech from me today. Instead we have this lopsided thing.

This along with electronic voting is supposed to be parliamentary reform. Close a major loophole for the opposition, bring in electronic voting as pursuant to what was promised in the throne speech and the government has its package. I hope that is not all there is to it. I have some feeling from the government House leader that that is not all there is to it. However, it would be hard to come to any other conclusion on the evidence at this point.

That is why the NDP is very much opposed to this particular motion and we hope others members of parliament are as well. Perhaps somewhere on the government side somebody will decide that he or she wants to make a speech in favour of balanced parliamentary reform instead of just defending this one-sided, unilateral, dictatorial, measure which has been introduced by the government House leader.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would very much like to attach my own remarks to those of the previous speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona, as a dean of the House and as a member of the McGrath committee which he referred to in his remarks. He certainly has the moral authority to speak on this particular issue and does so with great insight.

The leader of the government in the House is seeking to alter the standing orders of the House, and do so with an instrumental note to the House and to the Speaker, by banning what he calls repetitive and vexatious amendments at the report stage. As was alluded to, this is but one approach and one attempt to deal with an issue that arose in the last parliament over flooding the order paper with amendments, amendments that the government House leader has chosen to describe as frivolous and vexatious.

However, when I reviewed the remarks of the hon. government House leader, I noted that in the text he referred to consultation. We in the opposition have become somewhat accustomed, unfortunately, to token consultation, wherein we are advised after the fact that the government has taken a certain position on an issue and then receive a perfunctory phone call simply to inform us that this has happened. This is the type of consultation that occurred in this particular instance. This is why, as is certainly evident from the tone of most speakers on this side of the House, there has been particular offence taken to the manner in which the government has chosen to proceed on this.

There are obviously other avenues the government could have pursued, not the least of which was real consultation. I find it passing strange and the worst type of irony when we talk about the use of closure on this issue. I point out with great emphasis that time allocation was brought in on the very first piece of legislation which came before the House upon the resumption of this the 37th parliament. That in and of itself puts a very clear shot over the bow of the opposition about the government's intentions on parliamentary reform, let alone co-operation.

The remarks by the previous speaker on this issue as they pertain to the government's future goodwill is very much in jeopardy, particularly with respect to what remaining powers there are for members of opposition and members of the government side to express their concern, let alone their opposition to what the government has chosen to do.

I will briefly review what took place that led to the point where we are now at. As a new member of the House of Commons, it certainly was not one of my proudest moments to stand here and vote repetitively for hours on end. To draw the broader analogy, it is fair to say that it was not a proud moment for parliament at all. However, it is what led to that point that is very much at the heart of the debate.

It is the sheer and utter frustration that members of the Chamber feel in their ability to not only express their concern and their opposition but to even interact with members of the government, particularly cabinet. The government has chosen to go about this in a fashion that essentially cherry-picks from the Westminster tradition; that is to borrow a single example that suits its cause. I am talking about the specific motion that is before us which is very much borrowed from the British tradition.

Reviewing it in its broader context, it ignores, and the government House leader certainly ignores, the fact that there are other powers that exist in the parliament of Great Britain that allow the Speaker of the House to deny the government's use of closure or a motion for time allocation. Similarly, the Speaker has within his powers the ability to order cabinet ministers to come before the parliament, to be accountable not only to the House and the members but also to the country. We have rarely, if ever, seen that particular exercise.

Sadly, what we have become accustomed to is important government announcements being made across the street in the press gallery. We hear about them again after the fact. Yet the press and the Canadian people wonder aloud why it is that parliament's role is being diminished and its relevance questioned. It is very much attributable to the actions of this administration, the government, by choking and cutting off the ability of the opposition to question what it does. Even members in its own party do not have the ability to question its policy decisions and its legislative initiatives. The government has cut that off.

At the risk of being repetitive, we saw in the Speech from the Throne the government's vague reference to modernizing parliament through the use of electronic voting. We know the result of that. There will be less interaction with government, less direct accountability and certainly less direct democracy. There will be no ability to give and take on the floor of the House. Further evidence of modernization is to take away one of the last remaining instruments that the opposition had to hold up the government and at least slow down its rapid move to bring in new legislation.

I will interrupt my own remarks to indicate that I will be splitting my time with the right hon. member for Calgary Centre.

The practices of government are extremely bizarre when looked at in terms of the encodified manner in which it has presented the motion. The government is unable to put this motion before the House in both official languages. It is not possible for a committee of this House to draft a report and have it brought back to the floor of the House of Commons to declare what this House wants to do and what the rules will be when it is borrowed from the Westminster practice. As we know, those particular rules of practice are not available in both official languages to this Chamber. It also troubles us greatly to think that the government appears to be foisting upon the Parliament of Canada unstated and foreign guidelines that come from another chamber. That is to say, are we to take our direction from Great Britain now, as in the past?

It is certainly ironic that the oldest parliamentary democracy in the free world will dictate how we modernize our particular rules of procedure. This is something surely, as a sovereign country, we should be pursuing on our own. Does the Minister of Justice rely upon the criminal code of Ireland? Does the Minister of National Defence look favourably upon other countries to decide upon his own?

It is fair to say that the government did have other options available to it. It could have pursued this in a different fashion. It chose not to. The minister in bringing forward the motion speaks for cabinet. Did the cabinet agree to surrender our entire independence on this? If it did, it should resign.

This is a matter that should be decided by all members of the House, not the executive branch alone. To suggest otherwise, runs contrary to the basic tenets of democracy. To suggest that the cabinet alone decides how this place should function is offensive.

The government has a problem. The House leader has a problem. The House itself has a problem. If there is to be a repetition of the destruction of our report stage process, as this motion could potentially do, we have to deal with it in unity. We have to deal with it collectively. This is not the solution, to bring it in and to impose closure. It is certainly not the language that the House should understand or tolerate.

The House has already given its Speaker full power to select the amendments at report stage. That power currently exists. Restating it is a way to skirt around the real issue. If there is any doubt that this is the accepted way to alter the jurisprudence and preserve our national self-respect, then we should be engaging in a far more involved process than that which we have seen. The House can do better than say that we just do it because Great Britain does it. We need a made in Canada solution. The standing committee should get on with the work necessary to bring that about.

I suggest again that the reason behind this has very much to do with the government's desire to avoid any kind of delay in the reintroduction of the youth criminal justice bill. It is doing this because it feels that it might be embarrassed again by not being able to introduce one of its top ten priorities.

I will turn the floor over to my hon. colleague, the right hon. member for Calgary Centre, to conclude our remarks and our position on the motion.

[Joe Clark, Progressive Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation to the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for sharing his time with me.

He talked about a made in Canada solution. This should also be a made in parliament solution and it is not. It is one that is made by the government and imposed upon the House of Commons. That is not the way we will achieve change in this institution that bears the stamp of legitimacy.

I am taking part in the debate because there is an extraordinary opportunity now for us in the House to make changes that will make this a much more effective parliament. It requires some leadership on the part of the government. Unfortunately, these early actions indicate that it is not prepared to undertake the kinds of changes that are necessary.

The government House leader characterizes this as a single, very confined issue. It is not. It is part of a pattern of driving democracy out of the House of Commons and of turning this parliament and, I regret to say, turning the Speaker into a simple servant of the government. It reverses the whole history and the whole idea of parliament. It reduces the accountability of the government. More seriously perhaps, it reduces the independence of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

There is no doubt that some means must be found to ensure that parliament can act. However, there is also no doubt that the opposition must be able to delay actions which it thinks is wrong. That is what parliament is about. There ought to be limits on the power of government. That is why we established the rules of parliament.

Obviously, the tactics of the Alliance Party on the Nisga'a bill and the tactics of the Bloc Quebecois on the clarity bill have caused legitimate concern on the part of the government. They do to all parliamentarians. It is not the first time these issues have arisen.

In the last parliament the Speaker was never asked for a ruling on the correctness of the tactics that were followed. I suspect that the government was fearful of an unfavourable ruling by the Speaker and therefore remained silent.

Now there is no risk of an unfavourable ruling by the Speaker because the government, by this motion, is telling the Speaker what it is that he is supposed to decide.

Instead of discussing the issue as a whole parliament, as we should be, the government is moving now to instruct the Speaker not to accept amendments that the government considers to be frivolous. It does that, just so it is clear, without the support of any other party in the House.

When parliaments change their rules, the problem is to ensure that the changes are perceived as legitimate.

The traditional way of reaching a consensus is through committees made up of representatives from all parties. This is definitely not what happened here.

This is a change imposed by closure. There was no consultation, no attempt to arrive at an agreement. The result is that the House now finds itself with a rule that will not be perceived as legitimate, for decades to come. This change to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons is all the more difficult to accept because it concerns directions given to the Speaker of the House, in spite of the objections raised by minority parties here, and because it imposes restrictions on these minority parties.

There is no longer anything to prevent the Prime Minister's office from asking the Liberals to muzzle the bothersome House of Commons.

The House has just elected its Speaker, a Speaker in whom we have put all our hopes that he would honour this House. But the first thing that the Prime Minister of Canada does is to tell the Speaker how to perform his duties. The Prime Minister's action grossly undermines the authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

There are better solutions than rule changes by closure. The Chair could be asked for a ruling or rulings on the basis of existing procedure. If necessary, a committee could be asked to devise new guidelines written for the House and known to the membership of the House. Members who are not part of the leadership struggle and not part of the everyday battles in the House could be asked, as parliament has asked them before, to address the situation.

None of these options have been examined, nor was there an attempt to find a solution by consensus. Instead, change is imposed by closure on the House.

As my colleague said, the government is cherry-picking U.K. procedures. I, by the way, find it very ironic that a government that made such a to-do about repatriating the constitution should now be down on its knees bowing and genuflecting to the house at Westminster.

Are we not an independent nation able to establish our own rules? The government in the U.K., in its rules, is much more balanced than this government is proposing to be here. What the government is doing is choosing U.K. rules that suppress members of parliament without having any of the counterbalances, such as the power of the speaker in the United Kingdom to refuse a motion for closure or time allocation.

It is fairly certain that a British speaker would have refused to put the present closure motion on a change to the rules after just two hours of debate.

The speaker in the U.K. also has the opportunity to insist that ministers attend the house and make statements there and not run off to the press gallery. The speaker can extend or restrict debates.

Those are the rules of the house of commons in Britain, if we want to look at the whole picture rather than simply cherry-pick the rules that limit the powers of the opposition.

What is most serious about this is the government's attack on the Speaker. By adopting this course of action, it is giving the impression that the Speaker is to be a tool of the government. It treats the Speaker as though he is still a backbench Liberal member of parliament. It tells the Speaker what to do.

Let us be realistic. It is not the whole House that is denying the Speaker's right to exercise his own judgment, it is the cabinet that is issuing the order and using its power of discipline and fear to bring its backbench members into line.

There was, Mr. Speaker, as you would know, to the great regret of all of us, an infamous speaker in the House 40 years ago, René Beaudoin, during the pipeline debate. He lost the confidence of the opposition and of the Canadian public because he seemed to be taking direction from the government.

This motion raises the risk that every subsequent Speaker of the House could become a René Beaudoin. It creates the possibility that every subsequent Speaker of the House could become a simple servant of the government of the day instead of a servant and defender of the whole House of Commons. It corrodes the impartiality which is at the heart of the authority and the legitimacy of the Speaker of the House of Commons. It makes the House of Commons of Canada a simple subcommittee of the Liberal Party of Canada. That is simply unacceptable.

The government asks us in this motion to accept its definition of what is frivolous. This request is from a government whose definition of propriety allows the Prime Minister to lobby a crown corporation to give money to one of his friends.

The St. Laurent government, let me make the point, could have dismissed as frivolous the objections that led to the historic pipeline debate in the House.

The Trudeau government could have dismissed as frivolous the amendments that ultimately forced its patriation package to the Supreme Court of Canada where the Supreme Court judged that the package broke the constitutional conventions of the country.

The Mulroney government could have dismissed as frivolous the amendments to the Patent Act.

The present government could dismiss as frivolous amendments that would make the ethics counsellor report to the whole House of Commons.

The government's definition of frivolous will naturally differ from that of the opposition. Who should decide in an unfettered way in a case like this? The Speaker of the House of Commons should decide, using the Speaker's discretion and the Speaker's judgment, but that will no longer be possible after this rule is changed by closure.

This weakens the whole House of Commons. It weakens the parliamentary system. It is a step backwards and it should be opposed.

[Serge Marcil, Liberal, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the debate on this motion is very specific, and that is what we must look at.

After everything that has been heard in the House recently, I think we have reached the point where the record really needs to be set straight. We must really dot the i 's and cross the t 's,because the impression is being given that the House, at some point, is being used by certain people not to improve the work of MPs in the House or in parliamentary committees, but to prevent debate.

I interpret this as the result of the fact that certain people often talk just to hear themselves speak, but no attempt is made to let others say how they think a bill could be improved. These people take advantage of a loophole in the Standing Orders to block debate.

I think that the House should allow all members to express their views in order to improve a bill.

The problem right now is that members keep accusing the government of wanting to gag the House, but there is no doubt in my mind that the House is run not by the government but by a Speaker elected by all members of the House.

The present government House leader, the leader of the government party and the leader of the MPs who are in the majority in this House, speaks on behalf of his members, as the leaders of all opposition parties in this House speak for theirs.

When the leader of the Liberal majority in this House rises and tables a motion, he does so on behalf of all members and not on behalf of the government, as there is a tendency to believe.

When ministers are in this House, they are answerable to the House. They are across the way from the members of the opposition, who can question them. It is not, however, the ministers of the government who run this House.

This House is, in fact, independent. It is run by a Speaker elected by all members of this House. There is, however, a standing order which establishes the framework of intervention for the entire deputation of this House.

We must ask ourselves: Is the House leader of the majority bringing in a motion to amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons? No sooner asked than answered, and the answer is no.

The purpose of the motion is not to amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. It is to enable the Speaker to use the power vested in him, specifically to make a choice of motions, which has not been done for some time, a number of years, nearly thirty in fact, in the name of tradition.

The motion we are debating today has a purpose. It is not to contest, not to speak of closure and not to say that the House leader of the party with the majority wants to amend the standing orders. There is a reason this motion was introduced. The role of an MP is to take part in a debate, to improve a bill. We have established a procedure in the House and in all legislative assemblies in the provinces and the different governments for the very purpose of enabling members to intervene, to debate a bill or a motion tabled in a House.

The procedure is as follows. A bill is introduced, sent to a committee, a standing committee or the appropriate committee considers the bills clause by clause, motions are made and then a vote is taken in committee. When the bill is brought back to the House at report stage, we should not try to do what is indirectly impossible, because the amendments are to be moved in committee. The amendments rejected in committee must not be introduced in the House as well at report stage. In other words, we cannot do indirectly what we are not entitled to do directly.

This is when the Speaker can intervene to choose to permit or reject motions, to group motions. When we see, because the House has been around for a number of decades, what is being done today with the legislation on young offenders, for instance, we get to the point where we say “Enough, already”.

We can talk about the 3,133 motions in amendment that were brought in, 400 of which, namely Motions Nos. 2,646 to 3,029, were aimed at changing the date of the coming into effect of the act. These motions were moved by 44 MPs. At some point, given my age and my experience, I tell myself that I do not want to spend my time, and that is not what I was sent to this place to do, voting all night long, night after night, on trivialities.

We can talk about the motions moved by former MP Jean-Paul Marchand, Motions Nos. 2,657 and 2,658, proposing different dates for the coming into effect of the same provision of the act.

This is an abuse of time. I could go on. There are about 100 motions on the duration of a provision of the act. That is how things went during that whole debate. When we reach report stage and motions are brought in that have already been rejected in committee, someone must put his foot down.

That is when the Speaker must use the discretionary power that was vested in him upon the recommendation of a committee which reviewed the Standing Orders of the House of Commons back in 1968.

Since then—there had probably not been any abuse at that time—things have slipped. The sole purpose of today's motion is to reconfirm the power of the Speaker of the House to select the motions that will be debated at report stage. What we are asking today is that the Speaker proceed as he was expected to when the current parliamentary procedure was adopted, some 32 years ago.

The purpose of the motion is not to gag the opposition or to change the rules of the House. It only seeks to support the application, by the Speaker, of a custom, a tradition or at least an amendment to the rules intended at the time to allow the Speaker to keep things under control, to prevent debates from getting out of hand and to avoid having motions dealing only with punctuation symbols such as commas, semicolons, exclamation marks, question marks and periods.

This is what this motion is all about. In addition, motions must seek to improve the bill or to amend it to make it easier to implement, and not merely to interfere with procedure. For these reasons, I will support the motion of the government House leader.

[Randy White, Canadian Alliance, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to explain some of the problems with the particular motion. It is interesting that the government suggests that the Speaker would not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature.

Seldom can one suggest in the House of Commons that an amendment or motion is not repetitive, frivolous or vexatious in nature. Much of what is said in the House of Commons is repetitive for a reason, that 301 members have a right to choose what they talk about. It is my right to talk about the same thing as any one of my colleagues here. It is the right of any one of my colleagues, regardless of party, to table an amendment that is similar to any amendment I table. After all, that is what they were elected for.

The government once again is showing that it wants to manage the affairs of the nation from the Liberal Party's point of view and not from any other party's point of view. I would be surprised if government members in the House, and backbenchers in particular, are even willing to go along with this issue.

The government talks about making changes to reform parliament. It suggests that this is maybe one of those reforms because the House of Commons in England does something similar. The government does not have its act right on parliamentary reform. It cannot pick and choose a cafeteria style selection of what would be in its favour and deem it to be parliamentary reform. That is just not the way it is done. It has to look at parliament as a whole and select all the things that need change, not just some of them.

By the way, I will be splitting my time with the member for Dewdney—Alouette. We should understand that we have made many attempts in the House to bring about parliamentary change. We have asked, for instance, about questions and comments after speeches. Rather than somebody standing and taking five to seven minutes to pose a question, why could it not be done like question period? Why could the allocations not be made like that? What is wrong with looking at that? The government says it is not necessarily in its favour so it will not do it.

Perhaps we should allocate total speaking time in the House of Commons based on the number of seats of each party. The government says it has not done that before. Why do we not have sanctions or penalties for those who leak reports from committees? The government says it has not thought about that. It is a problem but it does not want to do that. Why do we not have all committee business in public rather than hidden behind closed doors? The government says maybe we should talk about that.

Maybe the chairs of committees should be allocated on the size of the parties involved in the House of Commons rather than the awkward approach of having a majority of Liberal members on the committees. Of course they select their own chairs so committees are biased at the very least.

Government members say that it might negatively affect them as the government but that they will bring it in anyway because it is something that is done in England. They say that the Speaker should not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature.

We asked why we did not have people on committees for longer assignment periods. The government responded that it had not done that before. We said that maybe the committees should be televised so they would be open to the public. It said that even though the house of commons in London and other areas like the United States do that, it did not know if that could be done here.

What about papers and reports coming from committees? Maybe they should be debated in the House of Commons. The Liberals say that they do not want to do that because it may bother them a bit.

What about the parliamentary calendar? Perhaps we should change that. Everyone knows that Friday is a useless day in this place, but we are not supposed to say that. The government does not want to make a change there. However, it says that it does one little change, it does not want this frivolous nature stuff that may modernize the House of Commons. It says that it will make that change today.

What about making all private members' motions and bills votable? If it is good enough to come to the House of Commons for debate then why is it not votable? It is in other jurisdictions, like the British house of commons. Why do we not bring that in here?

The reason these things are not brought to the House of Commons as changes is that it does not suit the government members. It does not allow them to commandeer the issues and to control debate. It does not work to be in the House of Commons and come from a region like mine and want changes in here unless one is a part of the government.

If the government wants something changed it can do it and it can say that it is doing it because it wants parliamentary reform. That is hogwash. The government does not want parliamentary reform at all. It wants what is good for government. That is what it is looking for.

The government says that all we are trying to do with our amendments is to hold up debate time because the time will be spent voting. That too is hogwash. Voting time is done after debate time. What this does is allow probably one of the best uses we could make of our time. Rather than voting time, standing for hour after hour, we would have debate time. However we cannot have debate time in the House of Commons any longer than the government sees fit or it calls time allocation, which shortens debate time.

The House of Commons is largely dysfunctional. It is still way back in the 1950s and 1960s on some of these issues. The government is even whining about televised committees. It is whining about electronic voting that is all over the world. It says that with electronic voting, which means pushing a button, the whip will not be able to see who is voting for them and who is voting against them in their own caucus. That is hogwash.

The motion reconfirms in my mind that the government has no initiative and no desire whatsoever to reform parliament. This is all about government control in a House of Commons that is very largely dysfunctional and will not change until the government changes.

[Grant McNally, Canadian Alliance, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing that we are having this debate today, so early into the new parliament. We are talking about a closure motion. We are talking about the government using its majority to change the standing orders so that it might have more power, more control over the way debate occurs in this place.

I will tell a quick story as a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The Alliance, with colleagues from other parties, suggested that we try having a secret ballot vote for committee chairmanships in this parliament. It is a fairly minor step toward changing the tone and inserting a bit of democracy into the committee structure where we spend so much time doing parliamentary work. The government voted that motion down and said that it could not proceed in this piecemeal approach, that it would not be right, and that we need to look at a parliamentary reform package.

There is no parliamentary reform package coming from the government side. It is using the argument it used to defeat our motion. It is proceeding in a piecemeal fashion today with this motion and it is truly disappointing. It shows the government's arrogance. It uses its large majority to stifle what it does not like to get what it wants, and that is unfortunate.

The motion is one that should be defeated by members. Unfortunately I do not think it will be. Over the last eight years the government has used its majority to reduce the opposition's role in debate and stifle debate on dissension in its own ranks among caucus members. It has everything to do with consolidating power and more power for the government.

The government is supposed to be the keepers of this place, the ones who would move forward in a way that would protect democracy and establish the framework for rules of debate in the House, not only for now but for the future. Yet the government is going down the opposite road. It is forgetting the lessons it learned in opposition when it spoke about such moves by a majority government. It is forgetting that one day it will no longer be the government, some day in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later.

l guarantee government members will look back on this day of debate and ask what they did. They took away an opportunity for opposition members to raise legitimate concerns and in effect they will be railing against the motion one day. It is unfortunate that they are not moving in a non-partisan way to make the House a better place, a place where debate is meaningful and individuals can bring forward ideas and suggestions.

Government backbenchers will be severely limited in the amendments they can bring forward to their own legislation. There are few tools available right now for government backbenchers. This is one more that is being removed from them in their ability to table amendments to government legislation. I expected government members would be bringing forward this point in debate today and not supporting the motion.

In the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs meeting today the member for Mississauga Centre, a respected member who does good work in the House, said that there should be a review of the entire workings of the House of Commons. She said that it was time for parliamentary reform. I agree with her, as do other members on this side.

We have put forward some positive proposals. I know my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford worked long and hard for many years on the topic of parliamentary reform. It is something we are continuing to work on.

When our House leader brought forward these proposals, the government's response was that they were half-baked and not even worth considering. What does that say about the government's real intention when it comes to parliamentary reform? Its actions speak louder than its words. The government's actions here today show that it is not interested in and not concerned about structuring a framework that would make this place work better so we could work together on issues we agree on.

Yes, we will disagree on some things, but there must be a way for us to signal to Canadians that we will move forward in a way which demonstrates we are more concerned about what happens in the country and in the framework we put in place for our citizens than we are about our own political careers. We want to structure the framework for today and for tomorrow in Canada and we have that opportunity. I believe Canadians are telling us that it is time for us to move on parliamentary reform. Much to our disappointment, the government's reluctance in this matter demonstrates to Canadians that it has no will to do that.

We in the Canadian Alliance have put forward 12 concrete proposals in our “Building Trust” document, some of which I would like to highlight briefly and some of which have been mentioned by my colleagues.

The first one would be to allow more free votes in the House of Commons. We have put in place this motion:

That the House shall not consider the vote on any motion to be a question of confidence in the government unless the motion is directly related to the government's budget or the motion is explicitly worded as a question of confidence.

We could put that in place. It is a concrete proposal that we are suggesting.

The second one is one which we have brought forward. We borrowed some phraseology from the Liberal red book having to do with the ethics counsellor. We brought that motion forward and it was defeated by the government. It was part of our proposals for parliamentary reform that the ethics counsellor report directly to the House. We know what happened. The Liberals voted down their own red book promise on that particular item.

The third item is to create a new standing committee on privacy, access and ethics:

To facilitate the work of the House and to increase the accountability process of government, an additional standing committee should be created and chaired by the opposition, whose mandate would be to review and report to the House on all aspect of the Acts and Reports of the Privacy and Access Commissioners and Ethics Counsellor.

That is something we could do. We could put that in place.

The fourth item is the introduction of candidates for the election of the Speaker. The rules should be amended to allow and require candidates to speak in an open forum before the election of the Speaker begins. That is something that actually did happen this time, but not as a convention of the House or as a change to the standing orders, which is what needs to happen. My colleague from Langley—Abbotsford was instrumental in putting that process in place.

The fifth point in our plan is the appointment of the Clerk of the House through a non-partisan committee. That appointment would be ratified and approved by all members of the House.

The sixth point in our plan is in regard to the appointment of officers of parliament. We think the standing orders should be changed to require the government to subject all candidates under consideration for these high offices to a committee review. The committee would also be free to recommend candidates of its own. As is the practice now, the ultimate decision would be made by the House and would be decided by the adoption of a motion.

The seventh point deals with the election of standing committee officers by secret ballot. As I mentioned, this was brought forward and voted down already. It is disappointing because this is a concrete proposal.

The eighth proposal in our plan is for less government control over standing committees. This would allow for a more independent standing committee process.

The ninth point deals with order in council appointments. We believe that a committee should have the authority to cause a vote to take place in the House ratifying or removing an appointment made by the government. A committee report recommending the removal of an appointment would cause the appointment to be withdrawn unless the government responded by introducing a motion reinstating the appointee.

The tenth point is one which we are discussing today and that is time allocation and closure. We are actually discussing closure and we think there need to be changes in that process, one of which would be to allow for a question period prior to a minister moving closure or time allocation. We think that is fair. The Speaker should only allow time allocation motions to be put forward if he or she is satisfied that the motion does not infringe on the rights of the minority.

As my time is growing short, I will briefly mention the eleventh and twelfth points. The eleventh point is about spending accountability. We need to make sure we have accountability in the way the government spends money. Lastly, we need to improve debate in this place.

We have put forward some concrete solutions in a concrete plan for change in this place. We hope there is a will among government members to do this, government members who are afraid that their actions are speaking louder than their words.

However, we will stand in this place and advocate for positive change time and again because we believe the will of the people in the country is for us to do so. We will do that.

[Randy White, Canadian Alliance, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On such an important precedent setting motion such as this, is there no way under standing orders that I could get the Chair to acknowledge the lack of numbers of Liberals in the House when we are debating such an issue?

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I will take a moment to think about this one.

The hon. member knows that he cannot allude to the fact that some members are absent, therefore this is not a point of order.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before making my comments and observations, I would simply like to reread the motion, because we have heard many things, particularly from members of the opposition parties. The motion introduced by the government House leader has been somewhat distorted. This motion reads as follows:

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.

Our job today is to limit your role but to increase your responsibilities, but the amendment moved should also considerably speed up the work of the House and thus improve its effectiveness for the general well-being of the public, which we are all here to serve.

It is a question of correcting a flaw in our parliamentary procedure which arose over the years in the course of daily practice, rather than through any rule. We are all familiar with the practice of delaying as long as possible the passage of a bill which, for various reasons, does not meet with the approval of our own constituents.

When I say our own constituents, I am speaking from the point of view of individual members and sometimes of a particular party. As I said, we are very familiar with this practice, the purpose of which is simply to delay passage of a bill as long as possible.

In all honesty, we have to acknowledge that there are many among us, on both sides of the House, I have to say, who use this practice and not simply to abuse procedure. We are not laying blame on anyone here. Our actions in this House are all motivated by the mission we have been given: to serve our electors.

Whatever the aims of a given political strategy, they are in accordance with the hopes of those who chose us to defend their interests to the best of our ability. Nevertheless, the end does not always justify the means, because in order to look after the interests of one, we sometimes, even often, neglect those of others. We necessarily impinge on precious time that should belong to the House as a whole in order to administer the affairs of the nation.

Certainly, the major parliamentary reform of 1968 provided for this eventuality and gave the Chair the authority to strike it. However, your predecessors, Mr. Speaker, have tended bit by bit to give way to the expression of democracy to the point that, over the years, this trend has become a parliamentary tradition and the practice has taken root. It is clear that in many cases it has been nothing more than an abuse of the practice. I repeat: it is clear that in many cases it has been nothing more than an abuse of the practice.

Earlier, the minister mentioned that the proposed amendment was not the result of a unilateral decision. After consulting with parliamentary leaders, we recognized the situation and the need to correct it. However, the way to correct it remains problematic. There were a number of options, but they did not allow for targeted solutions on other rules that had to be changed. Therefore, the minister simply chose to go back to the comprehensive reform of 1968, which offers the best solution in that it allows us to solve the problem without having to amend other rules that have proven their effectiveness.

Indeed, it is simply a matter of reaffirming the powers that the Chair already has, but that it no longer exercises to better protect freedom of expression. I really want to emphasize this point.

The opposition claims that, through this motion, the powers of the Chair will be restricted and even constricted. That is not so. In fact, the motion strengthens the powers and the authority of the Chair. This is at the core of the issue.

Under the standing orders, once a standing committee of the House has completed its review of a bill, a process that already includes amendments, the bill goes back to the House for what is called report stage. In other words, the standing committee submits a report on its review of the bill in question.

We all know that when a bill is reviewed in committee, public consultations take place and any committee member can propose amendments or changes which, in his or her opinion, will improve the bill.

This applies equally to a government bill and to a private member's bill that has succeeded in getting through the House for referral to a standing committee.

This is the appropriate time for members, particularly those who were not on the committee, to express their opinion on the bill and propose amendments they would like to see made, provided of course that they have given written notice of them. The only exception to this rule is bills relating to supply or ways and means motions.

Since the reform in 1968, there have been a variety of amendments in the standing orders relating to the report stage, on the length of speeches in particular. However, if the original intent of this report stage was mainly to broaden the debate, it was not in any way intended as reconsideration of what has already been considered by the committee. Yet that is exactly what is happening at present, and has been for some time.

As we are well aware, the present strategy consists precisely in repeating in the House the arguments that have already been raised in committee, and that have already been the subject of discussion, exchanges of views, debates and comments in the committee. It even happens that certain arguments are knowingly advanced before the standing committee responsible for considering the bill as a means of bringing them before the House as a whole.

The last major procedural reform had taken that into account. The standing orders conferred upon the Chair the power to group together the amendments proposed in order to avoid repetition and also to judge the merits of the amendments and thus their admissibility.

In practice, however, our Speaker's predecessors bowed to the benefit of the doubt and, gradually, out of concerns about limiting freedom of expression, they delegated their decision making power to the House as a whole, with the negative results we are today attempting to correct with this amendment.

This power comprises all the rights necessary for the solution we seek. The Speaker therefore has the right to reject a motion the committee has already declared inadmissible, unless he personally believes that it merits attention. If he deems it appropriate he can call upon the motion's sponsor for sufficient explanations to facilitate his decision. He must retain only those amendments which, for a variety of reasons, could not be debated in committee.

Finally, to shorten debate, he may group together motions which concern the same topic or are in some way similar.

At this point, two criteria come into play: the content of the proposed amendment, and where it fits in the bill. It should be pointed out, however, that the Speaker is not required to voice an opinion on the purpose or substance of the proposed amendment, or even comment on whether it merits discussion. His sole task is to decide whether or not the amendment is in order according to the rules of procedure on admissibility.

In connection with this aspect of the rules of procedure, the British parliament has an imposing jurisprudence, built up over many long years of experience, which, I am sure, would serve as a very valuable guide to our Speaker. The responsibility is heavy, however, I agree. It presupposes what are sometimes some very difficult situations.

We must bear in mind the fundamental reason for the existence of this chamber: to serve, to the best of our abilities, the public, which has put its trust in us to improve its living conditions.

It is also a question of a responsibility we must all assume for the collective good of society. I think that this proposed amendment to our parliamentary procedure will make our job and the Speaker's easier and will enable us to exercise the responsibility falling to us with greater rigour.

Were we to do so, I think that the general effectiveness of this parliament would benefit and, ultimately, the esteem in which Canadian politicians are held.

We have heard many claims from members of opposition parties. One of them was that the amendment will actually restrict the ability of backbenchers and simple members of parliament to bring amendments to the legislation and that it will actually restrict the Speaker's authority. The authority is already there. What has happened is that through the years, from 1968 until quite recently, preceding speakers chose not to use that authority. We are talking over 30 years ago.

I would defy members of the opposition to name one court, whether it be judicial or administrative, where frivolous actions can be brought in and where the judge, whether a judicial judge or an administrative judge, does not have the authority to dismiss out of hand on the face of the evidence or the file, a frivolous or an abusive action.

One only has to look at some of our commissions, for instance, both at the federal and at the provincial level, whether it be governance or civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies, where there is that authority. It is a well established practice and concept that frivolous, abusive and repetitive actions have no place in proceedings.

It is already part of your authority, Mr. Speaker. This amendment simply re-establishes that it is within the Speaker's authority to deem motions, which been brought before the House and which are frivolous, abusive or vexatious, out of order. In many cases, the sole objective of these motions is simply to delay the proceedings of the House.

There are members on the opposite who claimed that this was somehow limiting democratic expression of members. I fail to see how being forced to vote for hours on end on frivolous or in some cases vexatious motions, or changing a comma from here to there, allows me as a member of parliament to express the views of my constituents. It does not.

In fact, it actually limits the amount of time that I or any other member of the House have to actually debate issues. It reduces the amount of time that the House has in order to deal with the substantive issues and to deal with them in a substantive way.

Returning to my point, this amendment does not in any way limit, constrain or lessen the powers of the Speaker of the House. On the contrary, it reinforces his powers which, while already in existence, have been affected by a practice which has set in and prevented him, in a way, from exercising them and putting them into application.

I believe that this amendment would provide not just the government but the House as a whole with more facility and more means for the democratic expression of the points of view of their constituents.

This would, I believe, also give more time. We are always hearing complaints about insufficient time for private members' business. If we are not tied up, if our time is not taken up, with votes about changing a comma we get more time. The sole objective of such motions, which often originate with the opposition and let us hide nothing here, is merely to hold up, to block, the legitimate work of the House, the legitimate work of the members.

It is all very well to speak of the government, but there are members of parliament here. We too have work we want to get done, whether through bills or through motions. Procedures and amendments which are, in my opinion and that of many others, frivolous or vexatious ought to be declared inadmissible. The Speaker has the power. This amendment reinforces that power. It hearkens back to the source.

In closing, therefore, I call upon all colleagues on both sides of the House to support this motion by the government.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the chance to speak on the motion which seeks to reaffirm the traditional power of the Speaker to select motions for debate and reject those which are repetitive, frivolous and designed solely to delay report stage proceedings.

This is a particular honour for me since it touches on issues at the very heart of Canadian democracy, namely the dignity of parliamentary debate.

Canadians believe in the country. They are committed to its values of fairness and compassion. They are dedicated to safeguarding those freedoms which are our birthright. It is because of this that they hold institutions such as the debating procedures in parliament in great esteem. They see them as living symbols of the values and freedoms we hold so dear.

Recognizing this, members of the House have traditionally sought to improve the debating procedure of the parliament in order to increase the dignity of the institution in the eyes of Canadians. That is, for instance, why we are involved in so many parliamentary co-operative institutions around the world to see how it is done in other places and how we might improve what we do.

Unfortunately, we have not always proved equal to the challenge. In recent years some believe there have been early and worrying signs that some Canadians do not always hold the institution of parliament in the high esteem they once did.

While some of this may be just a result of general suspicion in all institutions, some responsibility for this disillusionment may lie closer to home with us in the House. For example—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. We have to deal with private members' business. Once we are done with this, the hon. member will have 18 minutes left for his speech.

It being 5.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.