I believe the right hon. member has forgotten two things. In my ruling I cited three Speaker's rulings on this issue. One was from 1965, but the other two were from 1984 and 2000, both after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Official Languages Act had been enacted.
I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. member, but in my view those rulings were made at the appropriate time. They reflect the existence of certain practices in the House which bind me, and at no time has the House sought to change the rule in respect of committee reports and transcripts of committee proceedings.
Notwithstanding the fact that those two rulings were made, ample opportunity was there for the House to adopt changes in its practice if it wanted to. It chose not to. I am sure the right hon. member would agree with me that it would be inappropriate for the Chair to start playing fast and loose with the rules by changing them at his whim because certainly my opinion on what the rules ought to be might be quite different from his on certain points and similar on others. It is not for me to make those changes.
The second thing, with respect to the fiduciary obligation he mentions, will no doubt be the subject of discussion in the House during the course of the debate. I point out to him that the committee report that has brought this bill back is in both official languages. The reprint of the bill and all the amendments that the committee proposed to this bill are in both official languages and are available here for debate. There are no doubt others moved and proposed by members which are on the Notice Paper that we will hear about presently. Those are also available to the House in both official languages.
Certainly, the question of fiduciary responsibility of the Crown to first nations people will be the subject of debate during the discussion of this bill, I have no doubt about that. But I respectfully suggest that it is not for the Speaker to determine when debate on this bill will start. That is a matter for the government, as has been the practice in the House since 1867. The government normally calls the business of the House and accordingly, I will now call for orders of the day.