Mr. Speaker, the question of declaring which votes are confidence and which votes are non-confidence depends primarily on the executive. I do not think the standing orders would establish that. It would be left to the executive.
It would be part of the overall reform of parliament if we had a broadly based task force, working group or whatever. It would include House leaders and MPs from all sectors who believe passionately in parliamentary reform in a constructive fashion. We could arrive at some sort of modus vivendi which included issues like the way we vote.
We could arrive at it the way the Brits did: by trial and error. I do not know who started it, whether it was members of the Labour Party or of the Conservative Party, but they started it at one point by saying that cross voting was quite acceptable. They started a tradition of goals: one week goals, two week goals and three week goals. They decided among themselves to establish a tradition on grading legislation including confidence votes.
Now it is a given that dissenting votes in Britain do not mean that a Conservative is less conservative or that a Labour Party member is less a member of labour. They established a tradition whereby they respect the rules and confidence votes are binding. I think we could establish that here without too many problems.