Debates of April 7th, 2003

Question No. 161

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from December 6, 2002, consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, and of the amendment.

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my point of order pertains to the motion to concur in the Senate's message respecting the vision of Bill C-10. I will also comment on the notice given by the government to curtail debate on the motion using Standing Order 78.

Mr. Speaker, as you are aware, both the Senate and the Commons have clearly established a difference between dividing bills and amending bills. It would be inconsistent not to apply the same logic and establish a difference between the Senate messages that amend bills and Senate messages that divide bills.

I will argue that the motion to concur in the message from the Senate regarding Bill C-10 cannot be considered a stage of a bill nor can the Senate's division of Bill C-10 be considered an amendment to Bill C-10.

Accordingly, the motion to concur in the Senate's message should not be listed on the Order Paper as a motion in response to an amendment made to a bill. It should properly placed on the Order Paper as a government motion. If you were to agree with my point of order, there are two consequences.

First, the notice given by the government to time allocate the motion in response to the Senate message is invalid since Standing Order 78 cannot be used to curtail debate on a government motion unrelated to the legislative process.

Second, the wording of the motion is incorrect. It is worded as a motion to concur in a message from the Senate regarding an amendment to a bill.

As was argued on December 5, 2002, the issue of the Senate dividing a Commons' bill was unprecedented.

We all assumed and accepted that this message seeking concurrence to divide Bill C-10 should be treated as an amendment made by the Senate. There are no other precedents regarding messages from the Senate dealing with legislation. If we had thought it through, we could have concluded that the division of a bill should not be treated as an amendment. Dividing a bill has never been considered an amendment and never should be.

The two most common messages that we receive from the Senate to which we are expected to respond are messages regarding amendments to legislation and messages regarding participation on joint committees.

A message regarding amendments made to legislation is treated as a stage of a bill. A motion pursuant to Standing Order 78 would, in that case, be in order to curtail debate.

A message regarding a committee, or any other business, would also be responded to by a motion. However the motion would be considered a run of the mill government motion and would be listed on the Order Paper accordingly.

Just because the Senate message is concerning legislation does not make it a stage or an amendment to a bill. Consider as examples the numerous House orders that are moved in regard to legislation. They are not treated as stages or as amendments to bills. Let us take a more specific and pertinent example such as the division of a bill.

At page 641 of Marleau and Montpetit, it states:

--the House may give the committee an instruction by way of motion which authorizes it to do what it otherwise could not do, such as, for example...dividing a bill into more than one bill....

A motion to instruct a committee to divide a bill stands alone from the legislation. It is a separate substantive proposition. It relates to the bill but is not a stage of the bill. The government could not use time allocation to curtail debate on such a motion.

On the Order Paper we have a motion instructing the health committee to divide Bill C-13. It was moved on November 22, 2002 by the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve. It reads:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Health that they have power to divide Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction, into two bills in order to deal with all matters related to the criminalization of practices such as cloning in another bill.

As you are aware, Bill C-13 has advanced beyond committee stage and the consideration of this motion is of no consequence to the legislative process of Bill C-13. If it were considered an amendment it would have to be disposed of first before advancing Bill C-13 any further.

If dividing a bill is not considered a stage or an amendment, then how can we consider as an amendment the motion concurring in the message from the Senate advising the House that the Senate has divided Bill C-10 into Bill C-10A and Bill C-10B.

The Senate itself did not consider the procedure to divide Bill C-10 as an amendment. The motion concerning the division of Bill C-13 is not considered an amendment in the House either. If that is the case, why are we treating the message from the Senate regarding the division of a bill as we would treat a message from the Senate regarding an amendment to a bill?

The motion to concur with the Senate should be listed under “Government Business” in the Order Paper with the other government business alongside the adjourned motion of the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve regarding the division of Bill C-13.

There was only one other precedent regarding the issue of the Senate dividing a Common's bill. On June 7, 1988, the Senate considered the matter of dividing Bill C-103, an act to increase opportunity for economic development in Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. The issue on June 7 had to do with the fact that Bill C-103 was no longer on the Senate Order Paper but was superseded by two separate bills and that the chair had a problem accepting that the two separate bills were still government bills.

Mr. Speaker also said:

Senator Graham's instruction does not deal with amending a government bill, but with dividing a government bill into two bills.

The Speaker of course was correct. No one was arguing that it was an amendment. Everyone agreed that it was a separate motion adopted by the Senate. The issue was whether the Senate could adopt such a motion, not whether it was an amendment.

On July 11, 1988, the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that the procedural event concerning Bill C-103 was totally without precedent. In his ruling on Bill C-103, the Speaker stated that he did not have the power to enforce the privileges of the House directly. He said that he could not rule the message from the Senate out of order for that would leave Bill C-103 in limbo. He said:

The cure in this case is for the House to claim its privileges or to forgo them....

I am not asking the Speaker to enforce the privileges of the House but to define what we are dealing with and have it worded properly and listed in the right place on the Order Paper. That would not leave Bill C-10 in limbo.

In the 1988 case the Speaker did not rule the statement made by the Senate Speaker was incorrect. I am referring to the statement that the division of a bill is not an amendment. It simply was not directly pertinent to the particular arguments put forward in the case of Bill C-103 and it was not a factor in the Speaker's ruling on Bill C-10.

The opinion of the Senate Speaker that dividing a bill is not an amendment has not been dismissed. It is accepted by both Houses that dividing a bill is not an amendment but, for some reason in the case of Bill C-10, the act of dividing a bill morphed into an amendment somewhere along the road from the Senate to the Commons.

As I said earlier, we did not know what else to do with such a message because, as Mr. Speaker stated in 1988, the procedural event concerning the division of a Commons bill by the Senate was totally without a precedent.

If we look at the message itself, it does not claim to be an amendment. The message was sent on December 4, 2002 and it is recorded in Journals as follows: “A message regarding C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, was first received from the Senate as follows”:

Ordered, That the Clerk do carry this Bill back to the House of Commons and acquaint that House that the Senate has divided the Bill into two Bills, Bill C-10A, an act to amend the Criminal Code (firearms) and the Firearms Act, and Bill C-10B, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals), both of which are attached to this Message as Appendices “A”and “B” respectively; and

That the Clerk further acquaint that House that: (a) the Senate desires the concurrence of the House of Commons in the division of Bill C-10; (b) the Senate has passed Bill C-10A without amendment; and (c) the Senate is further considering Bill C-10B.

The message does not claim to be anything more than a message. The Journals Branch does not attempt to classify the message as anything other than a message either. It began its life on the Order Paper as an amendment after the government gave notice of its motion in response. Therefore it is the government's response to the message where things went wrong procedurally.

I suspect that the government regarded the message from the Senate as an amendment made to legislation because it had no other experience of messages from the Senate regarding legislation.

Even though the message represented an extraordinary procedural event, the government's response to that extraordinary event was to use a traditional response. The motion obviously came from a template that has been used countless times.

Beauchesne's 6th edition has a number of them in appendix 1. All one has to do is fill in the blanks. There are templates in appendix 1 regarding the proper wording for report stage motions; six month hoist motions and concurrence in Senate amendments. Template No. 74 reads as follows:

That the amendments made to Bill C-...., an act...., be now read a second time and concurred in; but that this House, while disapproving of any infraction of its privileges or rights by the other House, in this case waives its claims to insist upon such rights and privileges, but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent.

The government's motion regarding Bill C-10 and the template are almost identical. I am not knocking the government's use of templates. We all use them. In fact, the opposition amendment to the government's motion could be considered a template amendment to a template motion. While the use of the templates help keep us consistent, they cannot be used in response to an extraordinary and unprecedented procedural event. We are required to think a little harder under those circumstances.

While the template theory may explain why we considered another message from the Senate regarding the division of a bill inadvertently as a Senate amendment, sound procedural practice does not come from a good explanation of how a mistake was made. Sound practice comes from correcting those mistakes.

Just how material are those mistakes to my argument, or how material will they be when touted as precedence, will be included in the much anticipated opposing argument that I am sure the government House leader will present in a few moments.

The House never adopted a motion that concurred in the Senate's division of a House of Commons bill. The motion before us has not been adopted yet and the only other motion, the motion regarding Bill C-103 from 1988, disagreed with the Senate. The House has never accepted the division of a bill by the Senate to be an amendment. The House thus far has rejected the Senate's power to divide a House of Commons bill outright.

That is why it is so important for us to get this right before the government adopts the motion. I would urge the Speaker not to put much stock in mistakes of the past. I would urge the Speaker to consider instead the pure logic of the argument I am presenting today. There is no question the logic is in the Speaker's Chair. It always is and always has been.

Since both houses have clearly established a difference between dividing bills and amending bills, it would be consistent to apply that difference to our response to Senate messages that amend bills and Senate messages that divide bills. If the Speaker were to agree with my argument, there would be another issue regarding the wording of the motion. It reads:

That, in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code--

The reference to amendments is what I am concerned with. If the Speaker were to agree with my argument, would that not disqualify the motion since the motion would not make sense if it were determined that the division of a bill is not an amendment to a bill? The proper course of action would be to place motions in response to Senate messages regarding the division of House of Commons bills on the Order Paper as a government motions, and not as amendments. Motions in response to Senate messages regarding the division of House of Commons bills should either agree or disagree with what the Senate has done and should not masquerade as an amendment. Dividing a bill is not an amendment.

In preparing my argument I considered the following question: Would the adoption of a motion that addressed an action of the Senate that was not considered an amendment to a House of Commons bill satisfy the legislative process? In others words, must the communication between the House and the Senate regarding legislation be exclusively about amendments in order to satisfy the constitutional requirement that both houses pass the same bill?

I raised a point of order last spring regarding Bill C-10A. I argued that Bill C-10A should not be allowed to remain on the Order Paper because the bill lacked a procedural necessity to qualify it to exist, let alone proceed to the next stage. Bill C-10A was the offspring of Bill C-10 and was divided as a result of a separate substantive motion that instructed a committee. I attempted to convince the Speaker that since Bill C-10A had not been read a first time, nor had it been read a second time, it was not legitimately before the House.

On June 3, 2002, the Speaker ruled on the matter. He said:

However in the circumstances, given the House's explicit instructions to the committee to divide the bill and report it in two parts, like dividing things like the Red Sea, we do have to follow the instructions that the House gave. In my view the procedure adopted by the committee was the exact instruction the House gave, which was to divide the bill into two parts and report it accordingly.

It was an excellent ruling. It did not matter to the Speaker that the bill in question did not actually receive second reading. The Speaker was satisfied with the procedural standing and legislative course of Bill C-10A because it was established through the adoption of a motion by the House. He maintained this opinion even though the motion that established the existence of Bill C-10A was not considered a stage of the normal legislative process.

In the case of the motion to concur in the Senate's division of a House of Commons bill, the fact that the motion to concur is not considered a stage of the bill or an amendment is immaterial. The Speaker, in this case, would have to respect the decision of the House as he did with the division of the bill. The records would show that both houses were in agreement and that the constitutional requirement would have been met.

Mr. Speaker, my arguments have raised two questions which I hope, in your wisdom, will give us an answer because we must ensure we do things right for the future of parliaments in this great land. Can the motion be time allocated using Standing Order 78? Can the motion remain on the Order Paper as placed and as worded?

Until the Speaker rules on this point of order I would request that the Speaker refuse to allow the time allocation motion to be moved and defer any vote on the motion regarding the Senate message until this matter is resolved.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things I want to address regarding this rather complicated address that the opposition House leader has brought to the attention of the Chair.

His first argument was that this issue brought before the House by the Senate was not a stage of the bill. Obviously, no. It has been ruled by the Speaker on a number of occasions that the message from the Senate regarding anything inside a bill that amends it is a stage of the bill. Proof of that is if it had not been a stage of the bill in the past, the Chair would have not enabled either myself or my predecessors from moving a motion under Standing Order 78.

If it had been considered strictly a motion, I would have had to use Standing Order 57. In other words, I would not have been able to use time allocation. I would have been obliged to use closure. The Chair has already ruled on that. There is jurisprudence from the Chair on ruling that Standing Order 78 can be used. It has been used that way for a long time on amendments from the Senate. That is my first point.

My second point is that the hon. member was drawing some sort of parallel between the House providing a reasoned amendment to one of its own bills and the Senate providing an amendment to a bill when it sends it back to the House. That has never been considered to be an equivalent. No one has ever made that argument in the past because it is totally incoherent. As we all know, the stated purpose of a reasoned amendment is to either refer a bill back to committee so that it not be now read a second time and so on, or that it be sent over here to be divided, or whatever.

The hon. member is not correct in saying that until this item is disposed of we cannot continue the consideration of the bill. If the opposition provides an amendment, as it did the other day and perhaps it is still before us on Bill C-13 that we debated earlier today, the provisions under our Standing Orders, whereby the time is added up in order to arrive at 10 minute speeches, still count whether we are debating the main motion or one of its amendments. It is all bunched together and counts as part of the same debate of what has to be disposed of in terms of voting before we can actually vote on other matter, but that is a separate issue altogether. In my opinion, what the hon. member is alleging does not reflect reality.

The hon. member also raised the appropriateness of the Senate's message. The Senate's message has the effect of telling the House that the senators have amended the bill by dividing it. They could have amended it by removing a clause. They could have amended it by adding something. They have amended it by dividing it. The test of this is that if the minister's motion to concur in the amendment is passed, then Bill C-10A would be ready for royal assent. In other words, this is a stage of the bill considering the Senate amendment, and I go back to the initial proposition that I raised.

There are two final points that I want to bring to the attention of the Chair. If someone is now alleging that this motion is inappropriately before the House, I draw the attention of the Speaker to page XI of today's Notice Paper in which it says that two hon. members of the House have proposed to amend the motion that is in the view of the same party not properly before the House. This begs the following question to be raised.

This begs the following question, how could a group of MPs in the House pretend that the issue is not before the House properly and then move to amend that which should not be there according to the testimony we have just heard?

I do not believe this issue is properly in order before the House. The hon. member's point of order is not in order in itself. In order for the Chair to entertain that point of order, it should have been made before the Speaker put the motion. The motion has been put. Not only that, it has received an amendment from the same political party, but perhaps that is an aside. No one member sought that particular point prior to the motion being put. The Chair allowed it to be put which makes it in order in that regard.

The House has even entertained an amendment to that particular motion and to make the point even stronger, it was made by members of the same political persuasion as the hon. member who has raised this now.

In conclusion, the motion is properly before the House. The House will deal with it and vote, in its own time, on the amendment, if hon. members still wish to have a recorded vote on that amendment, and on the main motion. Then, of course, the matter will be disposed of. Any intervention similar to either the one that has been raised now by the hon. member or anything similar would have had to have been made at the appropriate time and it was not.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to complete the picture because this matter does have quite a history to it. I wanted to bring to the Speaker's attention and to the House that in actual fact the member for Winnipeg—Transcona, who was then the House leader for the NDP, did rise on a point of order back in December 2002. What he said at that time, in speaking to this issue of the principle of a divided bill coming from the Senate, was that it was the House that should decide what pieces of legislation should be divided up and in what way they should be dealt with.

He then went on to say that it should be up to the House of Commons to do this because the way in which the Senate dealt with Bill C-10 had infringed on the financial initiative of the Crown and on the privileges of the House of Commons.

Mr. Speaker, in hearing that point of order, you ruled it out of order stating that:

The difficulty we face in the House is that there has not been a message received from the Senate that has indicated that the bill has in fact been split. It is entirely possible that the Senate could plaster the bill back together again before it sends it back to this House.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Senate did not plaster it back together again. In fact, it divided it and that is what is now before us. You went on to further suggest:

In the circumstances, I would suggest to the hon. member that we leave this matter for the time being until such time as we receive a message from the Senate.

Here we are, whether we characterize it as a message or an amendment the fact is it is now back before the House and it is a point of contention in terms of whether the process is legitimate.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to review this and give the House a ruling on this matter because this did take place. The Senate did bring it back in terms of a message or an amendment, but clearly it is before us.

[The Speaker]

I thank the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, the government House leader and the hon. member for Vancouver East for their interventions on this very interesting point.

This matter has been before the House before. When the original motion that is currently before the House, now with an amendment proposed to it, was first put, there were questions as to the admissibility of the motion. The hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast I believe quoted from my ruling on that occasion, in which I said that the motion was one that was properly brought because it allowed for the waiver of our privileges if it was adopted in respect of divisions of bills into two parts.

Accordingly, the motion itself was a proper motion and is properly before the House, so I do not consider that matter open for debate or discussion again. That issue is closed.

To summarize, I think what the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast is saying is that he wants to know whether or not the motion that has been proposed is in fact a stage of a bill, because if it is, Standing Order 78 can be applied to it and therefore a time allocation motion could be moved and applied to the bill. If it is not, then it is a regular government motion and the only way to bring a close to it, if the government chooses to do something to close it, is to use closure, Standing Order 57, as has been pointed out by the government House leader.

That is the issue I am going to look at. I will review the matter and get back to the House as to whether or not this particular motion is a stage of a bill.

I thank all hon. members for their interventions on this point. I will say that it is clear that the government House leader is not moving time allocation today, notwithstanding the notice that was given. He would have had to do so before now. Therefore, it is not going to happen today, which gives the Chair ample time, I hope, to review the matter and get back to the House with a ruling.

I thank all hon. members for their patience and understanding and their submissions, which have been most helpful.

The hon. member for Yorkton--Melville on a point of order.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I believe before we can move forward there should be some kind of a ruling on that, but I have another completely separate point of order that I would like to raise in regard to this.

If we go to today's Notice Paper, there is some wording in the motion that we are debating today that is causing me concern. The motion from today's Order Paper reads, and I would like to quote:

That this House, while disapproving of any infraction of its privileges or rights by the other House, in this case waives its claim to insist upon such rights and privileges, but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent;--

That motion raises two questions that I believe have to be answered before we proceed. Number one, is it possible to waive privileges? Second, if it is, should not the privileges we are waiving be clearly stated in the motion?

I was not able to find any Canadian parliamentary references to this point, but there were two in the Australian parliament that I would like to refer to because they had to deal with this particular issue, and, as you know, Mr. Speaker, they share a common heritage in regard to parliamentary tradition.

Odgers' Australian Senate Practice , Tenth Edition , under a section titled “Waiver of Privilege”, on page 69 states, and I will quote:

From time to time suggestions are made of a House or its members “waiving their privilege”, for example, by allowing the examination of particular parliamentary procedures by a court in a particular case. Such suggestions are misconceived. It is not possible--

And I emphasize this:

It is not possible for either a House or a member to waive, in whole or in part, any parliamentary immunity. The immunities of the Houses are established by law and a House or a member cannot change that law any more than they can change any other law. This was clearly indicated by a case in the Senate in 1985. A petition by solicitors requesting that the Senate “waive its privilege” in relation to evidence given before a Senate committee was not acceded to, principally on the ground that the Senate does not have the power to waive an immunity established by law.

Odgers' Australian Senate Practice , Sixth Edition , under a section titled “Waiving of Privilege”, on page 1037 states, and I quote again:

On 24 September 1952, a member of the House of Representatives asked the Speaker (Hon. A.G. Cameron) if it was possible for a Member of the House to waive Parliamentary privilege. The following day the Speaker replied as follows:

And I will continue with the quotation:

Each member enjoys an individual privilege which guarantees him certain powers and immunities needful to perform his functions as one of that collective body which is this House. But the privilege becomes a collective privilege in relation to anything said or done in this House in the discharge of his duties and functions. One of the oldest privileges of Parliament and the one most obvious to us all is the privilege of free speech within the chamber. Once something has been said in this House it becomes the collective property of the House, although the responsibility for saying it rests on the member. A member is always at liberty to retract or qualify something said here, but he cannot divest his statement, once having uttered it, of the privileges of the House. Nor can he, by a subsequent statement made under the same privilege, waive, cancel, impair, or destroy the privilege protecting his original statement.

I understand that similar wording has been used in the House, in 1997, but the motion also said and I quote:

--but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent;--

Mr. Speaker, you can read my lips: I do not believe that the government can waive the privileges of any member of this House at any time. The government cannot violate the privileges of any member, not even once.

I would like clarification on the two points I have raised. Is it possible to waive privileges? And if it is, should not the privileges we are waiving be clearly stated in the motion?

I look forward to your ruling on this, Mr. Speaker.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, on this point of order, first I think that my hon. colleague, in raising this point of order, as he talks about the waiver of immunities, he talks about two things in a sense. One is the waiver of privilege and the other is a waiver of immunities, which is a kind of privilege. It seems to me that in his comments the member is really focusing on the immunities of members and their privileges as members and the privileges of the House in relation to the privileges we all hold, which is a different thing than what we are dealing with here.

What we are dealing with here is a bill that has gone to the Senate and has come back to us. We have the choice as masters of our own House as to how we deal with that. We have the choice to say that we are going to accept this proposal, as you have ruled in the past that we can do, Mr. Speaker, and we can accept the proposal to decide whether or not we accept its amendments, and then that is the end of the bill. But clearly that is within our power.

This is an attempt, really, to go over the same ground that has already been covered in previous points of order and on which you have already ruled, Mr. Speaker.

I think the key point, though, when my hon. friend talks about privileges in the terms that he has in relation to Australia, I submit that it is not the same kind of privilege we are talking about here in terms of the waiver of our rights in relation to the other House; it is a different type of matter entirely in which we are the masters of our own House. We can determine ourselves what we are to do.

[The Speaker]

I am prepared to rule on the matter and deal with it at once.

The hon. member for Yorkton--Melville has raised a point about the motion. I stress that I have already ruled this motion to be one that is properly before the House. There were points of order raised when it was brought to the House originally and I ruled the motion in order then, so I am surprised to hear further argument on this point at this moment, but I will seek to answer his questions.

First, with respect to Australian practice, the hon. member will know that the Australian parliament has chosen to codify its law in relation to privilege. Accordingly, precedents that come from that jurisdiction are ones that would be possibly at variance with our own practice since we have never codified our rules in respect of privilege. It is a matter of the common law and the constitutional law of our country and has not been codified into an act of Parliament. That act of parliament in Australia colours any rulings that might be made in respect of privilege in that country, and particularly in that parliamentary jurisdiction, since any Speaker making a ruling on the issue would have to follow the statute and comply in every respect with the law, as would all hon. members of the legislature. So I do not regard the precedent that he has quoted as particularly helpful in this case.

Second, I would say that it is not the government that is determining whether or not our privilege is waived. It is the House that will make that determination. If this motion is defeated, then there will be no waiver of privilege. If the motion is accepted, it is accepted by the House and becomes then binding on the House, because the House has accepted it and has chosen to waive its privileges.

Third, with respect to any description of the privileges that are being waived, if the hon. member has concerns about those, he is free to move amendments to this motion and clarify the matter, but it is not for the Chair to specify what the House message to the Senate will be. This will become, if it is adopted, a message to the Senate waiving privilege. What privileges are waived or how they are waived and in what respect they are waived is a matter that is determined by the House when it adopts the motion.

If the hon. member has concerns, he is free to move amendments to the motion at the appropriate time. Perhaps those amendments will be adopted by the House before the message is sent to the Senate and would allay any fears he has that this waiver may be too broad or too wide or allow something to happen that might somehow not be in accordance with the House's wishes.

Accordingly, I think I am safe in leaving this matter in the hands of the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville, stating that if he wishes to move amendments to the motion limiting the privileges being waived or describing them in some particular way, such an amendment might well be admissible, and I would invite him to consult with the officers of the House seated at the table in respect of the drafting of any such amendments.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it has been very interesting, in fact riveting, to hear the debate over the last 45 minutes. I have been trying to learn what these procedures are all about. In terms of Canadians who might be listening to this debate, scratching their heads and wondering why we are going at it and why members of the opposition are so adamantly opposed to the amendments in the bill before us, it needs to be explained.

Although we have made our points of order and we will await the Speaker's ruling, in terms of getting on with the debate on Bill C-10, it is pertinent and still relevant to talk about the concerns we have about arriving at this point and how it is that we are dealing with this bill. Basically it comes down to this. It is very difficult to accept that the Senate, which is unelected and unaccountable, somehow has the right to take a bill from the House, split it up however it wants, and send it back saying, “This is how we want it dealt with”. That is the essence of the problem here and why we had all of the points of order.

I do want to say very clearly that from the point of view of the NDP, in terms of the actual substance of the two parts of the bill, originally we basically concurred with the contents of the bills. In fact it was because the government could not get its act together, because it had so much opposition within its own ranks, that it started resorting to various mechanisms and procedures to deal with it.

What we want to focus on today is the fact that we are vehemently opposed to the motion that is before us from the government which states:

That, in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, this House concur with the Senate's division of the bill into two parts, namely, Bill C-10A...and Bill C-10B--

The government amendment goes on to say that while disapproving of any infringements of its rights and privileges by the other house, i.e. the Senate, in this case it waives its claim to insist upon such rights and privileges, but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent.

We take a lot of exception to that. First of all, and I guess this would continue the most recent point of order, I seriously question what right the government has to say that it disapproves on the one hand but will waive the rights and privileges of the House. I do not give any such permission for the government to waive my rights. I think there are quite a few other members here who also would not give any permission or sanction for that to happen. To set that forward and to say on the one hand that somehow this is to be disapproved of but then to allow it to happen and to say that it will not be drawn into a precedent, really defies any kind of notion of common sense in terms of what logic and what consequences are now going to follow.

I want to say very clearly that we in the NDP on principle will oppose this coming forward from the government. In fact we will be supporting the amendment made by the member for Selkirk--Interlake and seconded by the member for Souris--Moose Mountain. The amendment makes it clear that we do not support the division of the bill and that in fact it is the view of the House that the alteration of Bill C-10 by the Senate is an infringement upon the rights and privileges of the House of Commons, and that therefore it should be sent back and the Senate consider bringing it back in an undivided form. That is the correct thing to do.

We are most concerned about the precedent that would be set here because the creation of two new bills does amount to an infringement on the rights of the House.

We have to look at this in context because regardless of the motivation for doing this, there is also a strong feeling from opposition members, and certainly from the NDP, that we do not support the idea of omnibus bills, putting everything under one cover and trying to get it through. Whatever the motivation of the Senate might have been in terms of a technical issue in splitting what was originally an omnibus bill, there is no way we will go along with the idea that it has the right to split a bill that would infringe upon the House.

It was mentioned earlier that there is a precedent. A situation did take place in 1988 with Bill C-103, which was a bill to establish Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. It was an act to increase opportunity for economic development in Atlantic Canada and establish the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation and so on. It was passed by the House and sent to the Senate. The Senate split the bill and sent one part back to the House.

In 1988 Speaker Fraser ruled that the privileges of the House had been breached. Not having the power to enforce his decision, the Speaker asked the House to claim its privilege by sending a message back to the Senate. The House did indeed debate a motion to that effect which was moved by the then minister of state for the Treasury Board, Mr. Doug Lewis. The motion said that in the opinion of the House, the Senate had contravened Standing Order 87 and infringed its privileges. The motion asked that the Senate return Bill C-103 in an undivided form.

The motion from the House of Commons was agreed to. On August 18 a message was received from the Senate informing the House that Bill C-103 had been passed without amendment. The bill went on to receive royal assent later that day.

In actual fact we do have a precedent where something was sent back to the Senate with a strong message from this House which made it clear that the practice of dividing a bill was completely unacceptable. In that particular case the Senate did the right thing and sent the bill back in the correct form.

This is absolutely what we should be doing today. While we could spend a lot of time debating the actual substance of the bill, what really takes precedence here is the fact that the Senate is trying to foist its will in a manner that is completely undemocratic on a House whose members were elected in a democratic fashion.

We find it particularly worrying that the government is allowing more and more to be undermined in terms of giving a greater legislative role to an unelected body and thereby eroding the democracy in the House of Commons. This is something we should be very concerned about.

We know for sure that the Senate is a place where there is all kinds of patronage appointees. Many influential senators sit on boards of publicly traded corporations. We had a situation recently that even when the senators were doing an examination of bank mergers they tried to limit the ability of a democratically elected House of Commons committee from doing the same.

There is something that really rubs the wrong way here. We are now put in the position of having to deal with something that is not of our creation in the House of Commons. It is being put on us by the other place in a fashion that, in my opinion and I think a lot of other people would agree, would set a precedent. It becomes something that kind of creeps along, and is something that should be very worrying.

As I pointed out in the point of order about an hour ago, the member for Winnipeg—Transcona way back in December of last year immediately saw what it was that was going on here. He rose on a point of order in effect as an early warning to the Speaker that this was about to take place, but because the actual division of the bill had not formally happened in the Senate, the Speaker chose not to deal with it.

I urge members to think about the issue. We are coming down to the bottom line of having to vote on the motion before us. If we are true to the traditions of the House, if we uphold the notion that there are separate responsibilities vis-à-vis the Senate and the House of Commons, if we uphold the traditions that the power to deal with legislation rests in this place and that we should in no way be allowing unelected people down the hallway in the Senate to dictate what will take place in the House, even if we do it through some kind of motion that says we waive our rights and responsibilities and this is not going to create any sort of precedent, who is kidding themselves on that?

If that happens, it will have been done and it will be used at some point in the future. We will see the continual chipping away of the role and rights of members in this place. We will see a kind of enhanced role and legislative aggressiveness begin to take place in the Senate.

In closing, we will do everything we can to make sure this does not happen. We will not be supporting the government motion. We will be supporting the opposition amendment.

I hope there are members on the other side who can see the writing on the wall about what it is that is taking place here. I hope they will be willing to stand up and to protect the traditions of democratic practice in the House. I hope that they will be willing to stand up and challenge what it is that is taking place before our eyes and to say that this is not on and that we should not be couching it in terms of not needing to worry about it because there is no precedent. Things have a way of coming back and repeating themselves.

If this does go through, I would not be surprised at all if at some point in the future somebody used it as a reference, that it happened before and can happen again. We must guard against that. I urge members to vote against the government motion and to support the amendment from the opposition because that is clearly the right thing to do in this case.

[Gerry Ritz, Canadian Alliance, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my NDP colleague's comments on the splitting of the bill and the way it has come back to this place. Would she comment on perhaps the worst infringement of the democratic process? Is it being done here in the House of Commons with the government accepting the split or is it being done at the Senate end?

There is nothing we can do. They are masters of their own destiny and so are we. Canadian citizens out there look to us to represent them in this place. We seem to have had that function stolen away from us in this type of precedent being set. I certainly agree with the member that we are setting a very dangerous precedent by accepting the split from the Senate. We are setting a new low. I know it will be used and will be referred to in the years to come.

I am wondering what the member thinks we as an elected body could do and should do at this juncture.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question raises an interesting point in terms of what it is we do objectively to guard and honour the rules and traditions of this place.

We could argue that if the Senate wanted to do something it would push the envelope and see what it could get away with. The member is right when he said that there is a sense in this place that we are the guardians of those kinds of practices. It would be a grave mistake on the part of the House to adopt the suggestion from the government that we roll over and go along with whatever the Senate says and not worry because it would not set a precedent. It is our responsibility.

In terms of the points of order that have been put forward we can see what may take place in terms of voting. It is up to all of us to consider whatever procedural means to prevent it from happening. The government seems to have no qualms whatsoever regarding this. It is quite prepared for this to go ahead and allow this to take place on the basis that it would not set a precedent when in reality we know it would. From that point of view, as members of the opposition we must work as hard as we can to prevent this from happening.

We represent something broader. We represent a democratic institution. When we come here, we come with a sense of the history and the purpose of what this place represents. From that point of view, we should stand firm and not allow the Senate to usurp the practices, and the rules and traditions of the House of Commons.

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the last two members who have spoken have said this is the fault of the Senate, and that may be true to some extent. However, is it not really the government that is the problem because it allowed this to happen? If the government were to respect the democratic process, it would never have allowed this to happen. It would not have allowed this kind of anti-democratic thing to happen.

Pointing the finger of blame in this case at the Senate is perhaps not the wisest thing to do. We should be putting the blame where it fairly belongs which is on the government for not respecting this democratic place.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand the member's point and that is precisely why we are opposed to the government's manoeuvre on the issue of accepting what the Senate put forward. The government is completely wrong. The onus is on the government to uphold the practices of this place. For it to roll over and say this is okay and not do anything to stop it should not be tolerated at all.

We should challenge what the Senate has done. It is pretty outrageous that an unelected body is prepared to do this. It is even worse that the government is now apparently going to allow this to go through. It is like six of one and half a dozen of the other. At this point the ball is in the government's court. It could decide not to allow this to happen. The government has the history of this place on its side. As the opposition motions states, it could send a message back to the Senate disallowing this. That is the correct course of action. That would be the right thing to do, but the government has chosen to cave in on this.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member as well and draw attention to something that she said. I appreciated her remarks very much. She has drawn attention to one of the key problems that exists in the government bringing forth the bill in the manner in which it did.

In the motion, the government says that it does not want to have this particular bill handled in a way that would represent some kind of a precedent. I believe that the precedent has already been set.

If we look at the Speaker's ruling that was rendered a few moments ago, he alluded to the fact that this has already been done before, so we can do it again. The government says it does not want it to be a precedent, but it is already becoming a precedent by the way it is handling it. I would like the hon. members comments on that.

I would also like her to answer this question, is it not the reason that the government is violating privileges in this way because it does not want to face the fact that there is huge mismanagement in this area, and if the House were to go through the proper procedures of this it would highlight the fact that this bill has been poorly dealt with, poorly enacted, poorly drafted, and that the government does not want to follow these procedures as it properly should?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can only reiterate that this whole affair has been poorly managed by the government. It had difficulties with its own members on how to deal with this and that is why it sent the bill off in that form to the Senate in the first place. It is now caving into the Senate.

I agree with the member that we can say what we want, but what we do is what counts here or anywhere else in life. We know that as parents and we know that in school. We can lay down various principles and say it is this or this or it is not a precedent, but what we actually do counts for something. That becomes part of the record and that is what is taking place here.

The government did not handle this issue in a proper way. It created a situation around it. Now, it does not know how to deal with that situation, so it is allowing the Senate to go ahead and override what amounts to the privileges of the House. The government acknowledges that because it is waiving it and that is clearly wrong.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have a real problem with my hon. colleague's argument that we cannot waive a privilege without losing it. If that were the case then we would not allow someone to cross over our land, for example, without them instantly having the right to do that from hence forward. The fact of the matter is that we can do that.

We can say to people that we will allow them to use our land today for some purpose, put up their tent for the night, or whatever, and the next day, if we wish, say to them that we will toss them off.

My hon. friend may know that in law, if we state every year to people that we are giving them permission to use this property, we in fact do not lose our rights and privileges. That is one of the ways we maintain our privilege.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we can see that this debate will go on for quite a while.

First of all, I never gave my permission and there are many members here who never gave their permission either. Second, even if I did or anyone else did, it is something that can be used as a precedent because it is on the record, it happened. Therefore, I do not accept the member's arguments. In fact, if anything, it reinforces the arguments that are coming from this side of the House, that what the government is about to do is clearly wrong.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the Senate amendments to Bill C-10.

I have a couple of issues before I begin the main premise of debate. I am always amazed when I hear members in the House of Commons referring to the Senate. It is obvious to all of us that it is an unelected body. However, it does have certain powers. Those powers are laid out in the Constitution and bound by points of order and procedure in this House and in the Senate.

I would beg to differ with the points of order that were raised already whether or not the Senate has the right to divide this legislation and send it back. That has been answered by the Speaker and I will delve deeper into that in my speech.

The point that I find remarkable is that the same people in this place who like to talk about Senate reform, and we all agree that we need some Senate reform, do not want to discuss giving the Senate more power. I do not think we can have one without the other. If we are going to seriously discuss reforming the Senate, perhaps someday making it an elected body, then we have to give it more power. It has to be able to introduce legislation much like it can right now but on a more timely basis. It has to be able to question in a thorough and complete way legislation that comes from this House.

The Speaker has already recognized the Senate's right to divide this piece of legislation. We may or may not agree to that and continue to raise points. I do not think that is the point. The hon. members are missing the point quite frankly. The point is that this split is based upon the fact that it is a flawed piece of legislation. Therefore, the entire piece of legislation should be thrown out and examined in its entirety.

The government is asking us to concur with amendments made by the Senate in regard to Bill C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act. As I have already mentioned, the entire piece of legislation is flawed. However, and key to some of the arguments that have been made already, without consent of the House the Senate split Bill C-10 into Bill C-10A which deals specifically with the firearms portion of the legislation, and Bill C-10B which examines cruelty to animals.

There has been a lot of debate in this place on whether or not there have been any precedents for that and obviously members have not thoroughly read and examined former precedents. During the debate on Bill C-103 in 1988 Speaker Fraser ruled at page 17,384:

The Speaker of the House of Commons by tradition does not rule on constitutional matters. It is not for me to decide whether the Senate has the constitutional power to do what it has done with Bill C-103. There is not any doubt that the Senate can amend a Bill, or it can reject it in whole or in part. There is some considerable doubt, at least in my mind, that the Senate can rewrite or redraft Bills originating in the Commons, potentially so as to change their principle as adopted by the House without again first seeking the agreement of the House. That I view as a matter of privilege and not a matter related to the Constitution.

In the case of Bill C-103, it is my opinion, and with great respect of course, that the Senate should have respected the propriety of asking the House of Commons to concur in its action of dividing Bill C-103 and in reporting only part of the Bill back as a fait accompli has infringed the privileges of this place.

With this, some members have taken the present case as an infringement upon the privileges of this House and as such are suggesting the split should be denied outright.

In his ruling, Mr. Speaker Fraser also stated:

However, and it is important to understand this, I am without the power to enforce them directly. I cannot rule the Message from the Senate out of order for that would leave Bill C-103 in limbo. In other words, it would be nowhere. The cure in this case is for the House to claim its privileges or to forgo them, if it so wishes, by way of message to Their Honours, that is, to the Senate informing them accordingly.

On December 5 the present Speaker of the House pointed out that he agreed with Mr. Speaker Fraser:

--that privilege matters are involved where the Senate divides a House bill without first having the House's concurrence, this is not the case in this instance. Our concurrence has in fact been requested.

That is the entire point around Mr. Speaker Fraser's decision.

Today we are looking at the amendment of the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake, which reads:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“, in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, this House does not concur with the Senate's division of the Bill into two parts, namely, Bill C-10A, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (firearms) and the Firearms Act, and Bill C-10B, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals), since it is the view of this House that such alteration to Bill C-10 by the Senate is an infringement of the rights and privileges of the House of Commons; and

That this House asks that the Senate consider Bill C-10 in an undivided form; and

That a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours therewith”.

From Speaker's ruling of December 5, it is clear that the action by the Senate is not out of order based on the 1988 ruling which in turn was set upon the June 11, 1941 case where the Senate consolidated two pieces of legislation into one.

The key in both the previous cases, being the request of the Senate to seek the consent of the House in regard to the consolidation of the split. The Senate as in this case asked for concurrence.

It is clear that this legislation in its own right is as flawed as the firearms registry itself. It would seem to me that we do not need to seek out precedent to reject the bill.

We can have all the discussions that we want to have. The facts cannot be changed of precedents that have been taken before this day. They are already there. The Senate has asked for the concurrence of the House and is within its rights to do that. That is not my point.

I would make it clear that the point here, and I think Parliament has missed the point entirely, whether it is in concurrence or not, is it is a poor piece of legislation. It is severely flawed. It has been changed by the Senate because it could not even swallow it. the Liberal majority in the Senate could not swallow it. The Senate sent it back to the House. We should send it back to the Senate again with a clear message that this type of legislation is poor legislation. It is not clearly thought out. It is unworkable and it should not be concurred in in the House, not on the basis of the point of order but on the basis of it being a poorly written, poorly thought out piece of legislation.

I will paraphrase that. It is unacceptable. We should send the message back to the hon. senators stating that we cannot accept this split based on the fact again that it is a piece of flawed legislation. It should be examined in its entirety in the same way it was rammed through this place and the same way the members of the government stood and supported it.

Let us take a look at it again and see if the government wants to support it again. I suspect some of the Liberals may have come to reason.

It is one thing to waste the amount of money that has been wasted on this bill, but probably the greater issue here is not only the billion dollars that has been spent, which could have been better utilized in other areas, but we should be clear that this has nothing to do with gun control. Had the minister responsible paid a little closer attention to the Auditor General's report, he would have noticed that the Auditor General clearly stated that the rationale behind the audit was to flesh out the cost of implementation, not whether gun control was the issue.

Unfortunately for Canadians, the audit remains inconclusive because financial information from the minister's department was not forthcoming, and is still not forthcoming. We could not get it at committee or at public accounts. We have tried several different ways to get this information but obviously the minister does not have to share that information with Canadians because the government is too arrogant to understand that Canadians count, that voters are important and that they have a right to know what is going on behind closed doors. This audit, which remains inconclusive because financial information from the minister's department was not forthcoming, found the problem more serious than simple cost overruns.

The Auditor General stated:

The issue here is not gun control. And it's not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark.

The government has learned nothing. That it has taken the $72 million it lost out of the existing operation appropriations to manage the shortfall in the program resources is again unacceptable. The majority of Canadians are in favour of gun safety. What they are not in favour of is more Liberal rhetoric about how the program saves lives. It does not. The 13% increase in homicides with firearms over the last four years show us that no lives have been saved. To suggest that this ineffective registry would make our streets or communities safer is a misnomer.

When questioned about where the money has been spent in the past, the government has told us not to worry about it, that it has everything under control. Liberal transparency is simply not enough. The former minister of justice shirked his duties when he convinced his cabinet that this program would save lives and plowed ahead with implementation anyway. When it became evident that this program was fatally flawed, the next minister covered it up and they back channelled money through the supplementary estimates. We have had this debate and I suspect we will have this debate again, but it is back in the House with the government members ready to close their eyes and stand and vote in support of the unsupportable.

Now we have another minister telling us to trust him. However I can say that one party in the House, the Progressive Conservative Party, has no intention of trusting this minister, or perhaps a new minister or any of the government ministers on this bill. Where did they gain the trust of Canadians on a cost overrun of $1 billion, on a propaganda war of misinformation? What part of that equation gained the trust of Canadians? What part of the registry has worked? No part that they have touched has worked.

Regarding safe handling and safe storage, yes, most of us are in agreement that it has worked quite well but the long gun registry has not worked. It cannot work and it will not work because the government will never convince all Canadians to sign up for it. There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are in contravention of the law today and they will stay there. They are not registering their long guns.

Will it put this to the solicitor general's department at some stage, go out and arrest all these people and fill the prisons and the jail system with them? Maybe it will make a special internment camp somewhere. It is absolutely ridiculous, shameful actually.

We can get into the war of words on whether it is a point of precedence, point of order or procedure, how Mr. Fraser ruled or did not rule or how Speaker Milliken ruled but surely that is not the point.

Surely the point here today is that this is flawed legislation. We have a responsibility in this place, all members in the opposition and members of the government, to throw it out of the House because it has not worked. It has been part of a propaganda war of misinformation that the government excels at. The issue here is to throw the entire bill out on the merits of the bill, not on the question, in my opinion at least, of whether the point of order may or may not have been correct.

Is the amendment incorrect is the issue. It is not whether the Senate has the right. It has done it. The Speaker has ruled on it. We have it in front of us. Let us get rid of the bill on the basis of the poor quality of the bill, on basis that the government has misled the public and on the basis that the government should be ashamed that it has not done better to protect Canadians.

[Peter Goldring, Canadian Alliance, Edmonton Centre-East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, by dividing Bill C-15B the question really becomes: How was it divided and why was it divided? The answer has to be rooted in Bill C-15B being inherently flawed and should simply be thrown out or not divided at all.

Because of the confusion of the Senate and the House and the delays, will the upcoming July 1 deadline for registering shotguns be once again delayed or will the government finally give in and throw out the registry of long arms altogether? What does my hon. colleague say to that?

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. I am not in disagreement with the premise of the question but I think it is wishful thinking because I do not think the government is willing to change it. It will allow the split and it will force its members to vote for the bill.

I do not know if we can get everyone in agreement on the opposition side of the House. Hopefully some of the government members with backbone will actually stand up and vote against it, not just not show up for the vote but will do what they said they would.

I remember the Solicitor General, when he was a backbench member of Parliament, had a lot to say about the gun registry. He was quite vocal in his outside in the foyer behind the curtains lobby against the gun registry. It seems that he has had a change of heart. It seems that something has taken precedence over his objection to the registry.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Somebody changed his heart for him.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Perhaps someone did change his heart for him.

It is time that the members stopped saying one thing and doing another. We have a responsibility as members of Parliament to oppose this legislation, exactly as the member said, because it is a flawed piece of legislation and does not deserve the consent of the House.

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I found it interesting that the member started off his speech by chastising those members who were supporting the amendment that would throw out Bill C-10, which has been split by the Senate.

In his comments, he chastised members who said we should try to have it thrown out based on the fact that it was inappropriate for the Senate to split the bill. At the same time, he just admitted in his debate that if we just opposed the bill based on its content because it is a bad bill, we in the opposition would never win, that it would be supported by the government and passed anyway. I find his argument on that a little hard to understand.

I think it is important, in fact, that the Speaker's ruling on this bill was based on a precedent set in the 1940s. I would like to ask the member whether he does not think that what Canadians would accept now in terms of democratic process is quite different from what Canadians would have accepted back in the 1940s in terms of democratic process. I believe that in a modern democracy people expect a lot more democratic process and do not believe the Senate should be interfering in this way. Even though the precedent is there, I think the times have changed, so maybe the precedent is not in tune with modern times. I would like to ask the member that.

The member also said that we should oppose this based on content and yet I did not hear him comment much on the content. As a final question, I would ask the member how he squares his current position on this with the fact that a former Conservative government passed Bill C-17, which was a bill that started this whole process in the wrong way in terms of the registry and so on, and--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Order, please. I interrupt just in case somebody else has a question. The hon. member for South Shore. I may come back to the member.