Madam Speaker, after taking into account the Speaker's ruling, I still hope that the government will want to quickly bring the matter to a vote or that, at least, in the meantime, the Speaker of the House might decide to step down himself, so that the work of the House can continue without this frankly unnecessary distraction.
I see that I do not have much time left, so I just want to quickly say in closing that I have to wonder whether the recommendations that the Speaker himself has decided to put in place, by which I mean the development of a best practices guide for future Speakers, will really be useful in the future. Even if there had been a guide, the issue here is that decisions were made that should have never been made, simply because it is so important for the Speaker to be neutral and impartial. This is the political equivalent of “Warning: Contents may be hot after heating”.
The Speaker never should have made the decisions that he did. At the very least, he should have sought advice from the many members of his support staff before deciding for himself to do something that might not appear to be neutral and impartial. In order for the House to function properly and for us to have healthy debate in the House, the Speaker must be neutral and impartial.
Unfortunately, in this context, unless the Speaker decides to step down himself, my Bloc Québécois colleagues and I must support the motion moved by the Conservatives today.