Mr. Speaker, first, with regard to the hon. member for Ottawa—Vanier, I will remind him that royal recommendations on government legislation are not implicit; they are actually explicit. The Crown has to decide to provide a royal recommendation, which applies to what is proposed in the bill.
With regard to the opposition House leader, it is he who said that the reason he is seeking the royal recommendation is that the current bill does not do these things. It is his own words that make the case for the fact that it is a new charge. He is seeking to have things done that he said are not done now. If his case is that the government already does provide enhanced oversight and has all the funding for it, and that the government already does the counter-radicalization program and the funding is there for it, then he need present no amendments. There is no need for this motion for instruction. That is not his case. He has said in his own words that these are things the bill does not do. That is why he is bringing them forward. These are new charges that are being created. These are not things that, if they are new, can be done without the expenditure of funds. In both cases that is what they require.
He may say that the government, in trying to defend the integrity of our system of controlling finances, is merely trying to delay. It is not surprising that an NDP member would make the case that expenditures should be allowed to happen in any way anyone wants, at any time, without paying any attention to the rules that have been in place for decades—nay, centuries—to protect the prerogative of those expenditures and protect the taxpayers. They are at the level of constitutional protections. I know the NDP members would love to be able to run roughshod over the Constitution, over the prerogatives, over the royal recommendation, over all these conventions. They would love to be able to run roughshod over them to increase spending at any time. The fact is that these are very important institutions, conventions, and requirements of a constitutional nature. They are well beyond conventions; they are of a much higher order than that. They are, in fact, constitutional.
This is a matter of great seriousness, and I have heard absolutely nothing from the opposition other than arguments that in fact support the case that what they are asking for is not covered by any royal recommendation and therefore that this motion seeking to give instructions to the committee is out of order.