My colleague said that congress is already doing that.
Second, I would like to mention petitions. Right now Standing Order 36 says a member can submit a petition. As one of my colleagues said earlier, nothing is ever done with them. When we had the issue of child pornography in British Columbia, I believe we had we had over 500,000 names on petitions, yet that evoked no reaction from parliament.
One thing we could do to connect Canadian citizens to parliament and increase the respect of the House, would be to have a plan of action. If petitions came into the House in certain numbers, using a threshold say of 100,000, 200,000 or whatever, and of course would be up to the committee to decide, then it would necessitate a motion being put before the House and debated for a day with an action plan on how to deal with the petitioners' request. I think that makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, the work that citizens do to gather petitions really becomes a meaningless exercise other than just to bring their issue to the fore and into the conscience of more people.
In my remaining time I would like to talk primarily about private members' business. There are other topics too. Many of my colleagues and people from other parties have mentioned them today so I will not repeat them. I agree with much of what has gone on, but I want to talk about private members' business.
I happen to be one of those members who is not lucky. The only time I have ever won anything in my life was when I was trucking. There was one place where we used to stop to eat in Alberta. It had what we call out west student scribblers or notebooks. It had the numbers one to fifty written down the side. We signed it whenever we bought a meal. When all the numbers had been signed for, the restaurant would write one to fifty on pieces of paper, put them in a little bowl and pick one. I won a free meal once in my life. Other than that, I have not won a great deal other than winning the hand of a beautiful woman in marriage many years ago. We have been married 40 years. That is a major win.
However, I am not very lucky, and in this House I have bombed. I have been here for seven years going on eight. I have not yet been selected on private members' business. Therefore, I propose a small change. Instead of having a random draw, I propose that all members elected to a parliament be put in a random order. I would be willing to provide my limited computer skills to do that. I have taught that sort of thing when I was teaching at the college. It could be computerized and the members would be listed in order. That means that we would go down the order and each one of those members would have the opportunity to have a bill brought before the House. If they declined, that would be fine. They would be moved to the bottom of the list and that list. That list in that order would stay for the duration of the parliament.
If members resigned, then of course their space would become vacant. Any new members elected in a byelection would automatically be put at the bottom of the list. If there were four byelections on the same day, then those four members would be put in random order at the bottom of the list. At least then we would be able to move up.
I did a rough calculation. We could increase the number of hours per week on private members from the present five to 10. This could be accomplished, for example, by having another private members' hour from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. If we had 10 hours per week, then in a parliament which lasted more than three years, of course with this current Prime Minister three and a half years is more or less the norm, every member could have their bill put forward and, if it were so arranged, there could be three hours of debate on each bill.
Then I propose that every bill be votable. It is useless to come up with a good idea and simply talk about it for one hour and then say it is dropped to the bottom of the order paper. Actually it is dropped into the garbage can. It is dropped off the order paper. Every member's bill should be votable.
I also would like to say that there is there are limited resources that are wasted here. When we came back to this parliament I had a couple of bills that I wanted to get into that first draw to increase my odds. I know all about this math stuff. When there are fewer people, the probability of being chosen is higher. I could not get them in because the staff were so overloaded they did not get to my bills. I did not get in on that draw.
What I propose is that each member be limited to no more than two bills or motions in the draw or at a time. That is fair, because they can only pick one. It goes through the whole rotation before there is a repeat of the list.
I have another consideration in regard to the standing orders that does cause a bit of a problem. I propose that no member be allowed to move an amendment to a private member's bill or motion without the consent of the mover. Sometimes the movers can be persuaded that they would have a better chance of getting it passed if they would agree to an amendment. If that amendment is not offensive, a member can choose to accept that amendment and then the debate and the vote will be on the amended motion. However, we have had several instances where a member's motion has been totally gutted by amendment. Then the government, with its majority, pushes it through and basically the private member's business is stolen from the member who proposed it.
I have more ideas here that I could talk about but I should respect the time. I will just mention one more item. I do not favour the suggestion that perhaps Fridays could become private members' days. I am worried about Fridays around here. I am one of the members who always makes it a point when the House is in session to be here the full week. I am often here on Fridays, and without saying anything about anyone specifically, you and I both know, Mr. Speaker, that the place is not exactly crowded on Fridays.
I would be a little worried about having private members' business relegated to Fridays, because its purpose is for the debates to occur in order for us to be able to persuade by reason, by argument and by good logic that a bill or a motion is worthy of support.
I will close my speech by giving the following bizarre suggestion, and that is that members' salaries would be paid for the week only if they actually showed up for private members' business on Friday.