I sense that the parliamentary secretary wishes to make submissions on this. Normally, on an application for an emergency debate the Chair makes a decision based on the submissions of the member who made the request rather than encouraging a discussion about the merits or the virtues of having such a debate in the House among hon. members.
I have carefully considered the request from the hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt. I have no doubt that the subject matter of the debate is one that would be of interest. On the other hand, in deciding whether this constitutes an emergency, I need to have some regard to the past practice of the House in this respect and, in my view, this request does not meet the exigencies of the Standing Order at this time.
I stress to the hon. member and others that there is a procedure available whereby the parties can agree to have a debate on subjects, take note debates on certain subjects if they wish to do so, and that can be done by agreement among the House leaders in the Chamber. We have had some of those, none recently, but we have had them. I encourage hon. members to work that venue as another possibility and avoid having the Chair decide that an emergency exists when I am not certain that the emergency, that is foreseen in some of the requests that are made, is one that meets, as I say, the exigencies of the Standing Order.
I thank the hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt for his interest.