Madam Speaker, I have listened to the hon. member carefully and I will just address the matter of royal recommendations.
In my opinion, he has raised two very different issues. The first concerns whether a new method of appointing returning officers would or would not require a royal recommendation. It is, in my opinion, easy to draft a bill that would not make such a recommendation necessary, but as to how the bill of the hon. member or his colleague was drafted, I have not read it. It would, however be simple to draft it—or so I believe—to avoid the need for a royal recommendation. So that is a matter of debate
Of course, if it is stated that the Chief Electoral Officer shall have an office with such and such responsibilities, with employees and so forth, that would certainly require a royal recommendation. It would, however, probably be less obviously the case if the bill were to read something along these lines: “The Chief Electoral Officer shall ensure that individuals are appointed according to criteria of transparency” or something like that. That would satisfy the CEO and not necessarily mean any additional expenses for the government. It all depends on the wording. I do not want to scrutinize the work of the clerks here, but I can imagine that the wording would determine whether or not a royal recommendation was required.
In the second instance, the matter is far clearer. In our procedural manual—Marleau-Montpetit, I mean—it states clearly on page 711: “An appropriation accompanied by a royal recommendation, though it can be reduced, can neither be increased nor redirected without a new recommendation.” This was, as usual, not something invented by Messrs. Marleau and Montpetit. They refer to Speaker Lamoureux's ruling of June 21, 1972. It is very likely that this would also be found in Erskine May if one did a search for it. This interpretation has, in fact, been in existence for at least 33 years. So I do not feel it is a recent interpretation. That is my opinion on the two matters, which I feel are two different things.
I would invite the hon. member's comments on this.