Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I will try to be brief out of respect for our Conservative colleagues because today is their opposition day. I am taking this opportunity because of the vote that took place earlier today to adopt Bill C-59 at second reading and report stage.
I will quote what the Chair said in response to a point of order I raised a while ago about applying Standing Order 69.1 to this bill.
The Speaker said:
However should the motion in fact be adopted to send the bill to committee before second reading and should the bill be concurred in at report stage and at second reading, I could certainly, as the Speaker, apply Standing Order 69.1 at third reading of the bill. At that time, one would anticipate that after it came back from committee, the bounds of the bill and its principles would be more clearly established.
For that reason, I come back with the same point of order. I would simply refer the Chair to the statements I made on November 20, 2017 to the record of that day. I made the same points. I would only add that the point is even more strongly made following the committee process. As we went clause by clause, different officials from different departments had to be present on different days as we went through different elements. That only reinforces the fact that not only under this legislation, but also where there are disparate pieces that obviously pertained to different acts in different departments, so they would be deserving of different votes.
I hope the Speaker will agree that there should be separate votes because there truly are different elements, especially concerning the Communications Security Establishment, which reports to the Minister of National Defence. The minister had to sneak into the committee at 10 to midnight to make a presentation. I think even the government acknowledges that some elements are in no way related except for some vague national security connection, which I feel is not a good enough reason for Standing Order 69.1 not to apply.