Madam Chairman, when I came here in 1984 it was almost impossible to get a private member's bill voted on. The system was somewhat different and was reformed to the way we have it now as a result of the McGrath committee report.
Before the McGrath committee report the items were all theoretically votable, but they were votable when the debate had concluded. We had one hour of private members' bills debate every day. The trick at the end of the day was to talk the bill out, as it was called. Then it went to the bottom of the list, only to reappear perhaps 18 months later.
It was the same as killing it except that it was not really the same. It was in a state of suspended animation. With any luck, of course, 18 months later the House had prorogued and we were into a new session and it started all over again. It was the same as killing it, except we were not killing it. That is the problem we had then. I think that was the absolute worst system one could have ever devised.
The system we have now is from the McGrath committee report. There is one member of the McGrath committee who is still a member of the House. That member is the House leader for the New Democrats. He is the only survivor of that committee, politically speaking, although there are several other survivors otherwise speaking. It was a good innovation. That does not mean we cannot improve it again.
In terms of the numbers of private members' bills passed, I know of some provincial legislatures that pass exactly zero private members' bills. It is just not done. Very few, if any, are ever passed in the Quebec provincial assembly. It does not happen.
I served for a number of years at Queen's Park as a provincial member in Ontario. There it was a different system. They were all theoretically votable, but there was so little independence in voting that effectively the government stood up and killed them every time by voting them down. It really did not do anything.
The innovation we have here, I think, is that first of all there are enough of us in the House with 301 members that there is a critical mass of people and at private members' hour it is a lot harder to separate strictly along party lines. That is a good thing. It makes for members with a little bit more independence of thought and that works reasonably well.
In terms of the numbers of private members' items, we have some every day, with a couple of exceptions, and hon. members will know that occurs if we are having the budget debate or the throne speech. For the throne speech is easy to understand why we would not want to have any there. It is at the beginning of a parliament and we have not had the private members' items in yet so there is no reason to have them there.
As to why we cannot have them at the same time we are having budget debates, I do not particularly object to that. I do not see that there is anything particularly offensive about other times around here. I do not know why we cannot simply have them every day. It is effectively the case now, with a few exceptions. Why not remove some of these exceptions? I am not against that either. All of those things seem to be at first glance good occasions to have private members' items.
Of course we will always be governed by our constitution in any case. Obviously members know that we cannot have a money bill at private members' hour, unless we find a minister who will provide a recommendation from the crown, a royal recommendation. That is a constitutional issue.
Furthermore, if a bill is to generate a tax then it is even more complicated. Not only must it be a minister but a minister must have tabled a notice of ways and means and have the ways and means motion adopted by the House before he or she can even introduce a bill to levy a tax. The equivalent in the United States is that there has to be a recommendation of the ways and means committee. The Canadian equivalent of that is a little different. It is the same as the British in that we have concurrence in the ways and means motion, which is the enabling motion that permits a minister to even introduce taxation measures in the House.
Those are two restrictions that I suspect will always be there because of our constitution, but that does not mean that there are not dozens of good ideas that can be addressed by way of private members' items.