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.