Mr. Speaker, what we understood we were agreeing to on this side, in order to support the government's Motion No. 2, was that the Speaker should put limitations on vexatious and frivolous amendments.
If the hon. member will recall, progress in the House was delayed because of hundreds of amendments of a frivolous nature pertaining to certain bills. That is fine, but unfortunately what seems to have happened, if I read Motion No. 2 correctly, it says that the Speaker will also be guided by practice in the British parliament.
Unfortunately, none of us know what is meant by being guided by practice in the British parliament. It would appear, from what the Speaker has said, and I cite it here, that he is making an allusion to Motion No. 2 and something that was endorsed by Motion No. 2, and I can only believe it was the guidelines that were cited in the original motion. He is using that, it would appear, to justify saying that only motions presented in committee will be selected.
I hope that is not the case because the reality around here is that we have to trust our leadership, on this side and on the member's side, in getting our support for legislation or a motion, that it will not introduce something into the wording of the legislation or the motion that it knows that we as backbench MPs will not have the opportunity or the expertise to check.
I make my appeal to the Speaker and tell him most emphatically that never did I understand, nor do I think the vast majority of the backbench MPs on the Liberal side understand, that the Speaker would confine amendments to be selected only to those that were proposed in committee. In other words, if we were to follow the Speaker's reasoning as we see it, what we would find is that the only committee amendments that would appear at report stage would be government amendments. If that is the case, then there would be no point in debate. The debate would have occurred at committee.
Never did I ever believe that what was proposed by Motion No. 2 would make it impossible for me to submit my amendments as a backbench MP to anything other than the committee. I need to have the right to submit my amendments at report stage in this House if I am not a member of the committee.