Mr. Speaker, I have noticed over the past 10 years that this dynamic of points of order has been used in ways that I think are not what they were intended for. I want to raise this in the House. This has come up before, when I was on the Board of Internal Economy, which was chaired by you, by members of the opposition and the government. We have raised this concern before and I want to perhaps put forward a suggestion with regard to the idea of points of order and the Standing Orders.
Each member of the House has a copy of the Standing Orders in his or her desk. We have question period in which opposition members can ask the government any questions they want, we have members statements before question period where people can declare what they want, and we have written questions to the House. We also have late shows, where if opposition members do not like the answers they got, they can use that mechanism as well.
Instead of using up time every single day, where we have question period and then, apparently, a rebuttal period, perhaps we should use points of order such that when somebody stands on a point of order, the member should first reference where in the Standing Orders there has been a violation of the protocol of the House and then make the case that the Speaker should appeal to their good judgment that the Standing Orders of the House have been violated.
Points of order are supposed to be about violations of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. Instead, they are being used as a rebuttal period, using up good time that could be used to debate both government and opposition legislation.