Mr. Speaker, in my opinion the motion before the House is fraught with problems. I would urge all colleagues in the House not to vote in favour of it.
I will give a little of the history.
For many years, members of Parliament sought to increase the role of the private member. Until the 1980s, a private member's bill or motion was debated for one hour, usually talked out, mainly by a designated government member, and then the item would fall to the bottom of the list and disappear forever. All this began to change following the adoption of the McGrath committee report in 1986. Since then, and gradually, the procedures have been changed.
First, some private members' business items have become votable. Then a further change made most of those items votable, which as all hon. members in the House will know is the system still in effect right now.
Before the landmark changes of 1986, private members' bills dealt almost exclusively with riding name changes and other similar non-controversial issues. Today, however, things are very different. For example, in 2005, part VII of the Official Languages Act was given judicial status by way of a private member's bill from a senator and in the House by the then MP Don Boudria. All parties in the House supported that bill. The hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst was an enthusiastic supporter of the measure.
If we move on to the 39th Parliament, the international development assistance was placed under a new accountability regime, thanks again to a private member's bill sponsored by the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood.
The Kelowna Accord Implementation Act and the Kyoto Implementation Act were both private members' bills. The latter was authored by the hon. member for Honoré-Mercier. I would like to congratulate all those members.
The question that needs to be asked is this. How did these bills become law? First, they became law because a member of Parliament proposed the measure in question. Second, they passed the House of Commons because a majority of the members sitting voted for those bills. Finally, the Senate gave these bills a priority status and passed them, as well. That is how those bills were passed. This is how private members' bills that originate in this House are passed and become statute laws of Canada.
The motion that we have before us reads:
That Standing Order 89 be amended by deleting the words “and of second reading of a private Member's public bill originating in the Senate”; and Standing Order 86.2(2) be amended by deleting the words “a Senate public bill or”.
Now while some members may mistakenly believe that if fewer Senate bills were on the House order of precedence, more House bills would pass, but the effect is the exact opposite. In fact, we in the House give priority to the small number of Senate private members' bills that reach our House and in exchange our private members' bills receive priority in the other House. It does not mean the House always gets its way, but it does mean that the absence of this reciprocal agreement would be to the disadvantage of the House.
When the member for Beauce says that he only wants reciprocity, in fact, if one looks at the system that exists in the Senate, there is reciprocity with the system that we have in the House to deal with private members' bills originating from the Senate.
Senate private members' bills would be relegated to the bottom of the list on the House side, while House bills would go to the bottom of the Senate list rather than to the top, as is currently the case. I will speculate as to who would come out the winner in a minute.
All the reform measures for which hon. members have fought for years would disappear with the passage of this motion. Private members' bills would almost never become law in the future. The only winners in this scheme, in my view, could possibly be the Conservative House leader and his colleagues around the cabinet. If it were another party in power and a member of that party proposed this change to the Standing Orders, I would rise and say the same thing, even if it were my own party sitting on the other side.
It would mean that many fewer private members' bills would ever have the chance of becoming law. The 1986 reforms and the reforms subsequent to those virtually guarantee that when we table a private member's bill it stands a good chance of becoming law.
Should Motion No. 277 sponsored by the member for Beauce actually be adopted in the House and the Standing Orders changed, we would be disadvantaging ourselves. More and more power would be drawn away from Parliament and placed into the hands of the Prime Minister and the governing party. I do not believe for one minute that this scheme originated in the mind of the hon. member for Beauce. I will leave it to others to speculate as to where it actually originated, but I have to say it would be one giant step backward for the backbench should it succeed and one very sweet victory for any government that is secretive, unaccountable and--