Madam Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely correct. In fact I have with me a copy of the list of criteria that were originally used. There were 11 criteria, by the way, and they were very detailed. I was listening to every word the hon. member said. That comes from a committee meeting, Madam Speaker, and it is kind of an inside issue.
We used to follow 11 criteria. That has been changed to five, whereby it does allow us certainly an ability to deal with those private members' bills and motions that come forward and perhaps do not fit or are perhaps, as the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona said, a little frivolous. I think we can deal with that.
As for the private members' business itself, the member is correct: where it is non-partisan it is dealt with by consensus. The problem is that we must choose a number from a number, like 10 out of 30. Every time I sat at that table and we chose the ten, the six, the five or the three that we had to plug the holes with, every member sat around that table and said “They are all worthy and I wish we could pick all of them”. We could not because we only had three or four or five holes to fill and that was all we could choose, but they were all worthy.
If they are all worthy then let them be debated and let them be voted on. That is what we are here for and that is what we are trying to achieve. It is not simply that there are three, four or five holes to fill. That should not be the case.
We do have consensus within the private members' business committee itself as well within the procedure and House affairs committee. Now we must try to work out the model itself so that it can be workable.