Mr. Speaker, the hon. member across certainly raised a number of interesting points. However, it seems to me it is incumbent upon the individual who is putting together a private member's bill to ensure the bill itself does not require a royal recommendation. To say, Mr. Speaker, that you only just informed the House yesterday and somehow there is a problem with that, it seems to me the problem is much earlier in the process.
Hon. members can dismiss this and say that it is only a royal recommendation and we should not be worried about the expenditure of money. We are quite worried about committing the Government of Canada to the expenditure of money. That is why the rules are in place. It is incumbent upon members to check it out and ensure that their bill does not have this because those are the rules. It was perfectly appropriate for you, Mr. Speaker, to make a ruling on this as you did yesterday.
The final part of what the hon. member said is that he wants some sort of a change in the rules, so that when a bill is introduced we do not address the concern of whether it is a royal recommendation at that time. We are prepared to live by the rules that have been agreed upon by the parties over the years as they relate to private members' bills and we will raise these matters at the appropriate time. Those are the rules.
If the hon. member wants to change them, there is a process in place whereby we can discuss them and have a look at those things, but we are not going to arbitrarily start changing the rules for members who have made a mistake by including a royal recommendation in their private member's bill.