Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for that. I assure him that I listened to every word he said. He and I are veterans of the private members' process.
I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville for bringing this forward today. I think we are having a very good debate. I would like to make a couple of comments and then ask a question.
First, having experienced serve time, I guess, on the procedure and House affairs subcommittee on private members' business, I know that none of the members would want to leave the impression that the decision on whether a bill is votable is a partisan decision, because it is one of the few committees that does not have a Liberal majority. It has one member from each party, a chair who does not vote and it operates on consensus. I can say from my experience that given the job we were assigned to do, I thought it worked quite well. It was a case where the decision on whether an item was votable or not was a decision that was truly made by our peers.
At some point here I think some members might have been misinformed in some of the debate on private members' business, leaving the impression that this was a committee where the Liberals had the majority and the iron hand of the whip was dictating what was done. That simply was not the case.
The issue comes back to what the NDP House leader was talking about. It comes down to a numbers game. If we do not expand the hours for private members' business, and we do the math, we see that we need to have some kind of filter.
When I first sat on that committee we had about 12 criteria, which were known to members, and members' bills were vetted. When members went to the Table for assistance in the drawing up of their bills, they followed those criteria. When we changed those criteria from 12 down to 4, thinking that we were making the process more open, I think we threw the train off the rails. I think that it then became a subjective process as opposed to an objective process.
I intend to support the motion, but I will be on the receiving end of this in the procedure and House affairs committee and I think what we need is an expanded set of criteria. I think everything that meets those criteria should be votable, but we have to introduce some filters or the whole thing will break down, even with the best of intentions.
I would be interested in the hon. member's comments.