Mr. Speaker, I rise on a different point of order.
I am rising in regard to a supply motion that is on notice in the name of the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North and it reads as follows:
That Bill C-311, An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change, be deemed reported from committee without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.
I point out that what this motion is proposing can only be done by unanimous consent. Page 625 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice states that:
The practice of giving every bill three separate readings derives from an ancient parliamentary practice which originated in the United Kingdom.
This leads us to Standing Order 71 which states:
Every bill shall receive three...readings, on different days, previously to being passed.
It goes on and mentions the exception:
On urgent or extraordinary occasions, a bill may be read twice or thrice, or advanced two or more stages in one day.
That does not mean that a motion can cover several stages with limited debate.
As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, the common urgency when bills are advanced two or more stages in one day is when back-to-work legislation is required. You will also know that even under those circumstances the rules do not allow for the advancement proposed by this supply motion.
The best we can do to expedite legislation in an emergency situation and without the unanimous consent of the House is to offer a motion that considers each stage separately with a separate vote. The House can only move on to the next stage when it concludes the previous stage.
In the case of back-to-work legislation, the House sits beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment and does not adjourn until each stage is dealt with by adopting separate motions, one for each stage.
This supply motion is proposing that we deal with committee stage, report stage and then third reading stage all at once with one motion and only after a few hours of debate. While I recognize that this has been done many times before by way of unanimous consent, we cannot consider this to be a precedent.
On page 502 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice and in citation 14 of Beauchesne's, the case is made that, “Nothing done by unanimous consent constitutes a precedent”.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I submit that this motion is out of order.