Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, we too in the NDP caucus are somewhat confused and perplexed by the reasoning that goes into whether or not a bill shall in fact be allowed to be debated at second reading as a private member's bill and when the Chair rules that there has to be a royal recommendation.
We have wrestled with this issue. Recently, there has been a rash of these rulings on bills that have come forward that the Chair has deemed as necessary to rule out of order. However, others seem to slide through that clearly have dollar figures attached to them.
I speak of the Kelowna accord, the bill that was put forward by the member for LaSalle—Émard and I listened to the reasoning thereto. However, we are getting confused and kind of frustrated that some of our bills are being ruled out of order and not allowed to come up for debate when others that clearly have a dollar figure, even a price tag of $5.2 billion, attached to them are allowed to come forward.
I speak of one specifically that I would ask you to take into consideration when you are dealing with the intervention by my colleague, the hon. member for Honoré-Mercier. One of the bills that was denied dealt with plugging a tax loophole where businesses could get a tax deduction for fines.
I know that we are not allowed to call for a tax cut as such, but how could it be considered a cut in taxes to plug a loophole that exists that we believe is a wrong interpretation of the Income Tax Act?
Therefore, I think there is going to be a need in the near future for some kind of a helpful guide, if you will, to be put out to members so that they will not waste their time crafting private members' bills that, after waiting for the lottery and for their opportunity to come up, will be simply ruled deemed undebatable at second reading for some mysterious logic.
I believe that the private member's bill put forward by my colleague should in fact stand because there is no direct dollar figure attached to the wise use of our energy conservation and so on, whereas there is a direct dollar bill attached to the Kelowna accord. We have to have some consistency if we are going to have confidence in the private members' system.