Mr. Speaker, I wish to very briefly address once again the issue you raised at the beginning of my comments, which is the issue of the time at which this question is raised and whether or not it is appropriate.
The point I was making is that, as is stated by Marleau and Montpetit, “If a royal recommendation were not produced by the time the House was ready to decide...”. There is certainly the implication that if I had walked in here right now and provided a royal recommendation and you had ruled previously that one was required, this matter would be able to proceed to a vote, and that would be appropriate.
Obviously, by extension, the converse has to be the case: that if the matter is still open to question, that issue could still be changed. If the matter is not finally crystallized, then we can also make this argument at this time. To decide otherwise would be to say that in no way could we rescue something that you had found to be faulty at this stage before the vote had occurred and once the debate had been completed. I do not believe that is what is concluded by Marleau and Montpetit, nor do I believe that is the particular practice.