Mr. Speaker, I would argue that this is a very important point of order, and I would recommend that everyone stop to listen.
Standing Order 117 says, “The Chair of a standing, special or legislative committee shall maintain order in the committee, deciding all questions of order subject to an appeal to the committee”.
Secondly, a committee chair's ruling on the admissibility of an amendment is not infallible. Mr. Speaker, in a ruling on November 3, 2025, at page 3,327 of the Debates, you yourself reached a different conclusion than the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance had concerning the need for royal recommendation for an amendment that the committee made to Bill C-4. The test for the Speaker's intervention in committee reports concerning bills does not rest simply on whether a committee chair's ruling was overturned, but rather on whether the committee, in adopting the impugned amendment, exceeded its authority.
The parliamentary secretary referred the Chair to paragraph 16.74 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, which provides that an amendment to a bill is out of order “if it is beyond the scope and principle of the bill.” The parliamentary secretary, however, did not offer any argument or reasoning for the amendments being allegedly beyond the scope of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I think you should reject the government's argument on that basis alone, since it is asking you to overturn a committee decision without any true procedural justification. As Janse and LeBlanc wrote at paragraph 16.96, “The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage.”
Indeed, as Speaker Milliken mentioned on March 14, 2008, at page 4182 of the Debates, “successive Speakers have been reluctant to intervene in the proceedings of committees except in highly exceptional circumstances.” That is, in fact, a commonly understood principle in this House, but the parliamentary secretary failed to offer any justification meeting that threshold of exceptional circumstances. Indeed, the same former Speaker explained on November 27, 2002, at page 1950 of the Debates, “it is true as well that committees are permitted a greater latitude in the conduct of their proceedings than might be allowed in the House. It may not always be clear in a particular set of circumstances how best to proceed and so the ultimate decision is left to the committee itself.”
However, should you disagree with me on the ending of your inquiry here, Mr. Speaker, allow me to offer submissions about how these Conservative amendments are actually within the scope of this bill. Let us get our bearings. First, footnote 164 on page 63 of Janse and LeBlanc refers to the scope of a bill as “meaning the schemes by which the principles of the bill are achieved.”
Paragraph 28.81 of Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, 25th edition, expands upon the concept. It states:
The scope of a bill represents the reasonable limits of its collective purposes, as defined by its existing clauses and schedules. In particular cases, difficult questions of judgment may arise. The scope of a bill, particularly of a bill with several purposes, may be wider than its long title, although the long title may help to determine the scope.
The same authority continues, explaining the United Kingdom's practice:
Standing Order No 65 gives a general authority to any committee on a bill to amend the bill as it sees fit (even if this entails amending the bill's long title in consequence), provided that the amendments are relevant to the subject-matter of the bill, that is to say, within the scope of the bill.
Bill C-8 is a broad bill, touching on a number of facets of the digital world. For our purposes, let us focus on part 1, containing amendments to the Telecommunications Act and making provisions for a variety of measures, including empowering the Governor in Council and the Minister of Industry, respectively, to make orders and give direction regarding the security of Canada's telecommunications system. What amendments CPC-2, CPC-5 and CPC-15 do collectively is require prior judicial authorization for certain of those orders, including for decisions of the cabinet or the minister to impose a gag order on Canadians.
I would submit that nothing about this changes or expands the scope of Bill C-8. Instead, they oppose conditions on executive decision-making, without changing the nature or scope of the decisions that might be made under the authorities proposed in the bill. In a ruling given on October 26, 2006, Mr. Speaker Milliken held at page 4308 of the Debates, that:
I cannot conclude that an amendment which provides for an appeal of a decision by the minister is contrary to the principle of the bill. As I see it, such an amendment places a condition on how decisions of the minister are exercised, but the principle of the bill remains intact.
Another precedent concerns a former bill, Bill C-483, which proposed to transfer decision-making authority over the temporary escorted absences of convicted murderers from penitentiary wardens, who are officials of the executive branch, to the quasi-judicial national Parole Board. The public safety committee reported that bill back to the House with amendments that would instead have had the decision-making responsibilities shared between institution heads and the Parole Board.
Mr. Speaker, your predecessor found the committee's amendments to have been in order, commenting on May 2, 2014, at page 4880 of the Debates, that:
I can see nothing in the bill as amended by the committee which would alter the aims and intent of the bill, namely the limiting of the power of institutional heads to grant escorted temporary absences and providing a role for the National Parole Board in the granting of such absences.
In the present case before you, Mr. Speaker, the government itself contemplates a rule for the federal court elsewhere in clause 2 of Bill C-8, namely, in its proposed section 15.9 of the Telecommunications Act, making provisions for the judicial review of the cabinet and ministers' orders. The amendments to Bill C-8, challenged by the parliamentary secretary, are like the 2006 precedent. This is the simple creation of a condition on how the decisions of a minister are exercised without changing the types of decisions that could be made and, like the 2014 precedent, simply adjusting to the responsibilities of the decision-makers who each already have assigned roles within the proposed statutory scheme.
To sum up, the parliamentary secretary's point of order should simply be dismissed for its failure to advance any procedural grounds for why the public safety committee's third report might be procedurally flawed. In the alternative, the impugned amendments are all, I submit, within the scope of the bill and have a nature consistent with committee amendments, which your predecessors have found to be within the scope of the bills concerned.