The Chair has heard the arguments advanced by hon. members and is quite anxious to give a ruling on this matter. In view of the imminence of the debate, this will have to be dealt with tomorrow.
I also would like to give reasons for this, which I am not going to expound on now, tempting as that might be. I am going to reserve my right to give reasons at a later date and I will come back to the House with reasons, but in my the view the motion is unacceptable in its present form.
My reservations centre on two aspects. One is it deals with legislation in the House and amounts to a form of closure on legislation, which we have a procedure for in the rules already, and this would amount to closure on three bills which, in my view, would be out of order if the government were to propose it. Similarly it would be out of order for the opposition to make a similar proposal. I am concerned about doing it with one bill because it is a more abrupt form of closure than we have currently, where the government can introduce one of these motions on its own bill and after a day a half basically of debate on closure, force it through.
We recently witnessed a similar motion introduced in respect of some back to work legislation that was debated one afternoon. It could have been closured if the government chose to do so later and have passed, specifying the time that was allotted for each of the stages of the bill. I think it is possible for a government to do that in relation to one bill by one motion, but not three. This motion deals with three.
I am going to rule now that the motion will not be allowed tomorrow, but I will come back to the House with reasons on this matter in due course.