Yes, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, in terms of past practice this motion clearly is premature. The House has not pronounced on this bill. Members have every right to have the debate, the first two hours of it, at which point hopefully the bill will be sent over to committee and perhaps amended there, perhaps in part to deal with the concerns being raised by the government.
The decision itself as to whether a royal prerogative is required here will be made and should be made at that time, I would argue, not at this time. That has been the pattern on a number of rulings we have had both in this Parliament and the previous Parliament.
In particular, and I want to echo the comments from the whip for the Bloc, it is really quite hypocritical to hear the government party stand and make these kind of submissions when in the last Parliament it repeatedly brought forth bills that, quite frankly, very clearly required royal prerogatives. We went ahead and dealt with them and in some occasions amended them to the degree that the royal prerogative was not necessary. For those members to make the argument at this stage is completely contrary to the practice they followed in the last Parliament when they were in official opposition.
What we should be doing and what I would urge you to do is simply put off making any decision on this issue of the necessity of the royal prerogative until the House has had its due process, until it has had the opportunity to fully consider this legislation and decide then whether the royal prerogative is required or not.