Before I call orders of the day, I wish to deliver to the House my ruling on the point of order raised earlier this day.
I am now ready to rule on the point of order raised by the hon. House leader of the official opposition, the hon. member for Fraser Valley, concerning the procedural acceptability of the subamendment proposed by the hon. government House leader on the amendment to the opposition day motion concerning the ethics counsellor.
I wish to thank the hon. opposition House leader, the hon. House leaders of the Progressive Conservative and New Democratic Parties, the hon. whip of the Bloc Quebecois, and the many other members who sought to assist the Chair on this matter.
The Chair has considered the interventions made on either side of the argument. As I said earlier in my remarks this morning, as a former practitioner of the art of dealing with opposition days, drafting motions and amendments from either side of the House, I have considerable sympathy for the point of view expressed on either side of the issue in the House today.
There is little doubt that the authorities are clear on the nature of opposition days. In the oft quoted words of Mr. Speaker Lamoureux on March 16, 1971:
—when...opposition parties agree as to...a subject on a particular day, the spirit of fair play would require that the day should not be taken away by means of an amendment.
As it says on page 727 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice :
Amendments which have the effect of providing the basis for an entirely different debate are not in order.
However, Standing Order 85 states:
Only one amendment and one subamendment may be made to a motion proposed in the Budget Debate or to a motion proposed under an Order of the Day for the consideration of the business of supply on an allotted day.
In fact, a review of our practice in this regard indicates that deftly worded amendments can and have been used to render opposition motions more palatable to the government.
For example, on February 12, 1992, on a motion regarding a final GATT accord that was phrased “to call on the government to support unequivocally” any final GATT accord, an amendment was proposed to replace those words with the words “supports the government's efforts toward reaching”.
On June 7, 1994, when the House debated a lengthy opposition motion that began “That this House strongly affirm and support the desire of Canadians to remain federally united as one people” and went on for eight lines describing the terms of such union, an amendment was deemed acceptable that deleted all the words after “Canadians to” and substituted simply “continue to live together in a federal system”.
Perhaps the closest to the situation we face today is a precedent from October 28, 1997, where an opposition motion calling upon the government “to establish a comprehensive national fisheries policy” was amended to delete the word “establish” and substitute the words “continue the implementation of”.
However, the situation that concerns us today does not involve an amendment, but rather a subamendment. Once again, Marleau-Montpetit is very useful, because it states, on page 454:
Sub-amendments must be strictly relevant to the amendment and seek to modify the amendment, not the original question; they cannot enlarge on the amendment, introduce new matters foreign to the amendment or differ in substance from the amendment.
The restrictions on subamendments are therefore severe. Indeed a student of the evolution of House procedures might well suggest that the current practice, where the mover of an opposition day motion splits his or her time to allow another party member to move a single word amendment, was in fact developed in order to thwart the proposing of amendments that would transmogrify the original opposition motions into propositions acceptable to the government. The possibilities for amending a single word subamendment are by their nature extremely limited.
Such, I believe, is the case before us today where the government House leader has made a valiant, though not successful, attempt to propose a subamendment. I must conclude that the proposed subamendment does not modify or refine the amendment but seeks rather to amend the original question. Accordingly the subamendment is not in order and cannot be put to the House.
I thank all hon. members for their interventions on this point.