Mr. Chairman, I thank the member for his comments. They were well thought out.
I congratulate him for speaking without reading. It is one of the unwritten traditions of parliament that speeches should not be read. Written material can be referred to for quotations or detailed technical information. The enthusiasm and sincerity comes across much more clearly to people when notes are not read, so I congratulate the member for that. All members could learn from that. Possibly our committee should consider maybe applying that because I would rather see members faces than the top of their heads when they are reading a speech.
I want to just question the hon. member briefly on the private members' business. I had much success in the 35th parliament. I had three or four items selected, three of them were votable. In the 36th parliament I had none selected. So it has been either feast or famine.
It seems to me that there are more members than we could possibly deal with all votes and that is not possible. If we do not get our item past second reading and the session ends, our matter dies and we have to go back into the lottery et cetera. We can only have an item carried forward from a session if it has passed second reading. Then it could be reinstated at the same spot.
My point is that there are far too many members and far too many ideas out there for which to do justice.
Perhaps the solution would be to establish more rigorous criteria so we could come up with legislation that would be more innovative and timely and which would capture the imagination and support of a significant number of members in the House not just at committee. I believe the entire House must opine on the calibre of legislation in order to allow it to go the full process.
I suggest and support a process where the private members' business committee would not deem votability but rather assess criteria compliance. The House would then deal with whether the bar on a particular bill or motion should be set higher.
Motion No. 155 dealing with health warning labels is an example of a motion where a bill would not have been any more concrete. We need more relevant bills regardless of the fact that we have strong criteria. It would be nice to know that if a bill or a motion meets the criteria and passes the hurdle it will get a hearing. It would raise us all to a higher level in terms of quality of bills and motions.