Mr. Speaker, although the business of the House will continue in a mere moment's time, the whole House knows that Bill C-2 was a significant overreach. If passed in its current form, Bill C-2 would require law-abiding Canadians to lose important liberties to pay for the Liberals' failures on borders and immigration.
The government, realizing the passage of Bill C-2 would be neither swift nor assured, went back to the drawing board and repackaged the less contentious aspects into new legislation, Bill C-12, the Bill C-2 redo. However, the government has since publicly indicated that the orphaned portions of Bill C-2 not only remain Liberal policy but also continue to be part of its parliamentary agenda, as is.
I share the member's view that Bill C-2, in its current form, cannot proceed further in the House by virtue of the same question rule. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, explains this practice at paragraphs 12.89 and 12.90:
A decision once made cannot be questioned again but must stand as the judgment of the House. Thus, if a bill or motion is rejected or adopted, it cannot be revived in the same session.... This is to prevent the time of the House being used in the discussion of motions of the same nature, with the possibility of contradictory decisions being arrived at in the course of the same session.
This rule is dependent upon the principle which forbids the same question from being decided in the House twice within the same session. Although two similar or identical motions or bills may appear in the Notice Paper, only one motion or one bill may be proceeded with. Thus, if a decision is taken by the House on the first bill, for example, to defeat the bill or advance it through a stage in the legislative process, then the other similar or identical bill may not be proceeded with.
In the present case, Bill C-12 would be what is described as the “first bill” in Janse and LeBlanc's explanation, because it had been adopted at second reading back on October 23, 2025, while Bill C-2 would be the “other bill” described in that passage and therefore cannot now proceed.
Bill C-12 and Bill C-2 are, in my view, very similar in substance. Indeed, Bill C-12 is effectively a copy and paste of 11 of the 16 parts of Bill C-2, plus one of its two schedules, as the member enumerated in her argument.
Setting aside the marketing-oriented short titles of the two bills, Bill C-12 is composed of 136 of the 197 clauses found in Bill C-2, or 69% of its clauses, adjusted only insofar as necessary to reflect the passage of time between the introduction of the two bills. As such, if the House is called upon to vote on Bill C-2, it would be called upon to vote again for second reading of many legislative measures it has already approved, but it might yield a different result.
The Chair has had multiple opportunities during the previous two Parliaments to rule on these issues, after many Conservative private members' bills have been poached by the government as its own legislation. While we are happy to see a good idea get adopted, often it gets thrown into an omnibus budget implementation bill, or buried, some might say.
I would refer the House, for example, to the following rulings: Mr. Speaker Rota, on February 18, 2021, at page 4256 of the Debates; the Deputy Speaker on May 11, 2022, at page 5123 of the Debates; Mr. Speaker Rota on June 6, 2022, at page 6140 of the Debates; Mr. Speaker Rota on September 20, 2022, at page 7341 of the Debates; the Speaker's immediate predecessor on November 29, 2023, at page 19211 of the Debates, and again on December 12, 2023, at page 19978; and finally, the then Deputy Speaker on June 7, 2024, at page 24627 of the Debates.
In the May 2022 ruling, the Chair held that Bill C-250, the private member's bill proposed by our colleague, the hon. member for Saskatoon South, could not be debated and would be rendered “pending” following the second reading of Bill C-19, a budget implementation bill that contained clauses similar to my friend's bill because:
The House should not face a situation where the same question can be decided twice within the same session, unless the House's intention is to rescind or revoke the decision.
In June 2024, the Chair again fashioned a similar procedure, which would have seen the vote at third reading of another private member's bill, Bill C-323, held in abeyance, if necessary, until the budget implementation bill, Bill C-59, had completed its course through Parliament.
This approach to placing pieces of legislation on hold after a similar bill has made progress is not a brand new practice. I would refer you, Mr. Speaker, to the ruling of Mr. Speaker Michener, who said on March 13, 1959, at page 238 of the Journals, in another situation concerning nearly identical pieces of legislation:
...the House is not going to occupy itself on two separate occasions under two separate headings with exactly the same business. That would not be reasonable, and I can find no support or authority for following such a course. Thus I have come to the conclusion that this bill must stand, as well as the other bill in the same terms, or at least in terms for exactly the same purpose, until the bill which was first moved has been disposed of either by being withdrawn, which would open the door for one of these other bills to proceed, or by way of being approved, which would automatically dispose of these bills because the House would not vote twice on the same subject matter any more than it would debate the same subject matter twice.
To sum up one of my most brief points of order ever, 69% of the content of Bill C-2 is replicated in Bill C-12, making the two bills substantively similar. The House has since passed Bill C-12 at third reading, in another example of the wonderful collaboration that is found in this place, and it is working its way through the procedures of the other place.
Because the two bills are substantively similar, the same question rule precludes the House from voting on the same matter twice, and therefore, Bill C-2 must be placed in abeyance while Bill C-12 remains before Parliament. If Bill C-12 receives royal assent, Bill C-2 then must be discharged and dropped from the Order Paper.
I note that all of the records were from nearly the last 100 years, again a departure from my usual practice in raising the precedents that guide the decisions of the Chair.