I am quite prepared to believe that the meeting started five minutes late, because there was a briefing for another political party. I believe that. Members of the other parties also had the right to hear the information; it is their right.
However, to say that this gives members the right to criticize all those in the government who work on this bill because they wanted to leave before the end of the meeting is unfair. I say to my colleague that he ought to pay attention to what he says in this regard. I am not talking about the general briefing for all parties, but about the specific one for members of the Conservative Party of Canada.
As I said, there was a general meeting, and we agree on this, which representatives attended. There was a second individual briefing for each political formation. Some members decided to attend, others did not. It is their right. Of course, those who decided to go and to leave the meeting early and then criticize those who gave the briefing acted with a lack of sensitivity, to say the least. I will not say what I think otherwise about this.
The bill is good. It deserves the structure of the debate that is before us today. We will recall why there is a procedure to debate bills in this House before second reading.
We could go over the procedure that enables us to do that. Members will know that if a bill comes to the House after second reading, the usual rules apply in committee. A committee cannot increase an expenditure in the bill and it cannot levy or impose a tax. The committee is bound to the principle of what is known as beyond the scope of the bill. In other words, the bill cannot be widened in terms of its scope.
Members on all sides of the House, particularly the opposition, have clamoured for greater use of referring a bill to a committee before second reading. Why? Because the usual concept of not going beyond the scope of the bill does not apply. The restriction is only what we call the long title of the bill. Amendments can go beyond the scope of the bill, providing they do not exceed the parameters of what is known as the long title. That gives opportunities for members of Parliament to make considerable amendments to a bill because it was referred to committee before second reading. That is why this process is used and used more by the government because it enables members to participate more fully.
I listened to another critique of the hon. member for Edmonton—Leduc. He said that seven bills had been referred to committee, that the committees had too much and that they could not be masters of their own business. First, that is not how the rules work. It is the duty of committees to take, as first priority, legislation delegated to them by an order of the House. There is an order of the House for the committee to take care of a piece of legislation. Obviously, that has priority over things that the committee generates on its own.
Standing Order 108(2) specifies that a committee can undertake matters that are not referred by the House. That is not the same as saying that the orders of the House cease to exist because the committee can also undertake things outside of that. It is like saying that people do not have to work any more because they are entitled to their hobbies outside their working hours.
The issues that committees choose to do in addition to what the House has assigned to them is supplementary work, valuable work, interesting work, and I engage in that almost everyday. In five minutes from now I will be chairing a parliamentary committee doing some work in that regard, under Standing Order 108(2). However, that is not the same as saying that somehow the House does not have a right to refer issues to committee. It is the committee's duty once that work is assigned to dispose of the matter and send it back in a timely fashion for further study, at the next stage of the bill, in the House of Commons.
I thought I would give my opinions on some of the remarks made. Again, I hope the House will consider this legislation fully, provide the proper constructive amendment in cooperation with the volunteer sector that is doing such a great service for the citizenry of Canada.