Mr. Speaker, I hope you will not object if I take a moment to give context to the comments of my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North.
In the last Parliament, I proposed a motion to amend the Standing Orders and when that motion came before the House, it was voted on in a free vote. All members of the Liberal Party, with one exception, voted in favour of it. About two-thirds of Conservatives voted in favour of it, and about 20 NDP members voted in favour of it. The member's point is that we do not have unanimous consent and, therefore, it would be hypocritical for me to be advocating unanimous consent for changes to the Standing Orders, which was not the matter I was addressing. I was addressing abuses on the procedure and House affairs committee. However, let me deal with this.
What happened was that proposal to change the Standing Orders went to the House, it was then sent to the procedure and House affairs committee. The procedure and House affairs committee made a unanimous recommendation that the matter be referred back to the House of Commons without a recommendation in favour of or against, and that all parties consider the possibility of engaging in a free vote on the matter, which was done. If we follow, there was all-party consent on this matter at committee, which is what I have been arguing all along. If the member goes back and examines the record, he will see that I have always said that we need all-party consent.
In the context of the procedure and House affairs committee, that means unanimous consent. It does not mean I am trying to suggest that if we change things here, we should give any one member of Parliament the ability to stop the change from going forward. I am saying all-party consent, and that practice existed in the past. That was the practice, for example, in the committee I mentioned under the Chrétien government, where all party House leaders were members of a committee. It was the committee that had to approve changes, not a member of the House of Commons but every member of that committee, every party, in other words. That practice was followed with the changes that I proposed and that were eventually adopted with regard to the election of the Speaker. They are the practices that should be maintained for all future standing order changes.