Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to speak for the NDP to Motion No. 277.
I have been a member of this House since 1997 and private members' business has changed quite a lot. I can remember the days when we had to go before a committee and argue whether or not our bill or motion should be votable. Most were not votable and only a few made it through. However, the system has changed a lot and I think all of us in this place highly value private members' business.
We are in a tradition that is very strong on parties and private members' business is one of the few areas that we have left where members can advance an item that pertains to their riding or an issue that they care deeply about that they want to see go through the House.
Private members' business is something we all highly prize and enjoy and something we want to see continued.
In looking at private members' business, one of the important issues is the principle of equality that it brings. We have a system of having a draw and we have the order of precedence. When I explain that to my constituents or to people who are interested in a certain bill or motion, they have some trouble understanding this rather archaic system of actually having a draw, like a lottery, but that is the system we use.
However, It does give an opportunity to all members and does not put some members above others. It is a system that, through the lottery and through the order of precedence, allows members to have their bills or motions come forward.
I began with that point because the sense of equality and the sense that there is no discrimination among members in the House is very important in how we deal with private members' business.
I thank the member for Beauce for bringing this motion forward but it is unfortunate that he is now being blamed for bringing it forward because the procedure and House affairs committee happens to be studying this. However, his motion came forward because his name was drawn and he had a right to do that. We cannot nail the person and then say that somehow they should not have done that.
The procedure and House affairs committee, of which I am not a member but I did go to one meeting, only decided to study this issue after this motion came forward. Therefore, to somehow deny the member the first hour or a subsequent hour of debate is unfair. I wanted to say that because I thought it was a bit unfair to go down that path.
I agree with the member from the Bloc who just said that we should not change the Standing Orders lightly. The Standing Orders are a very complex set of rules and they arrived where they are for a thousand and one reasons. To change them, one needs to look at them carefully. I am glad the procedure and House affairs committee is doing that study because we need to get more information in terms of how the Senate deals with business comes from the House of Commons. There has been some general understanding about what happens but we need to have a better sense of how it deals with the priorities and whether or not there will be impacts.
We in the NDP had quite a lively debate in our caucus about this motion. We felt that the underlying principle here was the need to be fair to members in the House of Commons. This idea that bills or motions coming from the Senate are automatically placed ahead in the queue is something that, quite frankly, we find very frustrating.
I think the tendency today in the debate has been to somehow suggest that if this motion were to go through, it would eliminate opportunities for members of the Senate to bring items of business forward and, of course, that is not the case. What is being suggested here is that what would be left behind is their automatic entrance into the order of precedence.
What would happen, if this motion were to pass, is that something which came from the Senate would need to be sponsored by a member who was in the order of precedence in the House of Commons by a member of Parliament. We would all have that choice. We could choose one of our own items or something that came from the Senate but it would be very clear that we could not, in effect, double-dip.
The need for members to have a sense of equality and fairness about how we are treated in terms of private members' business is what underlies this debate. I was a little worried when I heard the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine characterize this motion as something that would disempower members in the House of Commons. My understanding is that the motion is being put forward to ensure members retain the order of precedence and that it does not get bumped by bills or motions coming from the Senate.
This idea that we are disempowering ourselves makes me wonder if the member knows something that we do not know, that there is some kind of retaliation that will take place. That does concern me because I do not think we want to get into that. This is about our Standing Orders. This is about how we treat our members, how we receive our business and how we deal with it, and we should focus on that.
This is the first hour of debate. There will be a second hour of debate. The procedure and house affairs committee is looking at this quite closely, which is a good thing. Maybe, as a result of that examination, which is not mutually exclusive to the member's motion today, we might have a better understanding of what happens in the Senate and be able to arrive at some kind of understanding about what needs to be done in terms of changes to the Standing Orders.
At this point, for us in the NDP, although there may be various opinions among our members, we are generally supportive of the principle of ensuring that there is fairness and equality for private members' business. We think that is very important.
We do realize that we need to proceed carefully. We are perfectly okay with the fact that the procedure and house affairs committee is looking into that. Our member on that committee will be very involved. I think it is possible that by the time the committee has done its study, we will be getting close to the second hour of debate. Maybe there will be some more informed opinion about what we might want to do with this motion.
I do not think we should automatically can the idea on the basis of almost implied threats that come through to the members of this place from the Senate. I really do not want to buy into that and I do not want to see us get into that kind of debate. We should look at our Standing Orders from the point of view of the needs of members in the House of Commons and we should take it under careful consideration.
Those are some of the comments that we have about this motion. We look forward to the continuing information that will come forward in the debate that will take place. We will see where it goes. Hopefully, we can stick to this principle of equality for members of the House of Commons and ensure there are fair rules in place.