Peter Milliken

[Questions On The Order Paper, November 2nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, Question No. 239 will be answered today.

Question No. 239-

[Government Response To Petitions, November 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to two petitions.

[Motions For Papers, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I ask that Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers be allowed to stand.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, if Question No. 223 could be made an order for return, the return would be tabled immediately.

[Committees Of The House, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I move:

That the House, pursuant to Standing Order 119(1)(i), authorize the Standing Committee on Industry to televise its meetings with banks and other lenders during the week of November 6, 1995, in accordance with the guidelines pertaining to televising committee proceedings.

(Motion agreed to.)

[Committees Of The House, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I move that the 96th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, presented to the House earlier this day, be concurred in.

That is the one I tabled earlier, changing the names of members of various committees.

(Motion agreed to.)

[Committees Of The House, November 1st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 96th report to the House of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on the membership of the Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Disabled Persons and the list of associate members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

If the House gives its consent I intend to move the adoption of this report later today.

[Government Response To Petitions, November 1st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to three petitions.

[Points Of Order, November 1st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has raised a point of order that on its face sounds reasonable.

I urge him first of all to have regard to the practice of this House in relation to the words spoken in Hansard . If I am making a speech and I say words that I do not mean to say, that are incorrect, such as when I say a not when I did not mean to say a not, and then repeat the sentence correctly, Hansard does not print two sentences, one with a not in it and one without. They print it the way I intended it; it is corrected and printed as one sentence.

Similarly, if I repeat words for emphasis I get reported in Hansard , but if I repeat them because of interruptions that might come from hon. members elsewhere in the House, those additional words are not printed in Hansard . The editor takes those words out.

I submit in the case that the hon. member has raised there is clearly a misunderstanding as to what happened, as to what the chief government whip said. When it was corrected by a subsequent intervention by Your Honour in asking the chief government whip whether he intended it to be in reverse and he confirmed that he had intended it to be in reverse, there was simply a correction made by the editors to make it appear that there had not been that misunderstanding. The question was not replaced in Hansard .

First, Hansard has never followed the exact words spoken in the Chamber word for word on every occasion. That has been a practice in this House for as long as I have read Hansard , which is over 30 years. I think the hon. member will recognize that fact.

Second, last evening after the vote was applied in accordance with the request by the chief government whip, there was a misunderstanding on the part of the Chair, which I submit was the correct understanding. If the hon. whip is correct in his submission, the thing that should have happened is that the bill should have been defeated because there were more nays than yeas on the division cited. I know that is his point.

My recollection is very distinct. I have not looked at the video to check it but after the vote was applied, Your Honour said: "I declare the motion carried". My recollection is that on Bill C-103 we were dealing with concurrence at the report stage. Your Honour then put the question: "When shall the bill be read the third time?" The answer was, at the next sitting of the House.

The Chair understood the way the chief government whip intended to have the division applied, which was to carry the vote. Everyone in the House understood that the government was going to win the vote and that it was intended to be applied that way.

All the Hansard editor has done in this case, in my view quite correctly, is excised the questions that resulted in the clarification and made it appear that the chief government whip did it right the first time. He apparently did make that slip. The Chair, in my submission, understood what he meant and the correct procedure was followed, the bill was concurred in at report stage and third reading was ordered at the next sitting of the House.

Had the Chair correctly heard the chief government whip and applied it the way the hon. Reform whip is now suggesting, that would not have been the result and we would have had a clarifica-

tion in an awful hurry because I was listening to the proceedings and I heard it go. I was satisfied that third reading had been ordered at the next sitting, otherwise I would have been on my feet.

While I sympathize with the Reform whip in his submission, I submit that the Hansard editors have acted very correctly in this case. The hon. member really has nothing to complain about because everything was clarified last night. Nothing was done in secret between the Chair and the chief government whip. It was done on the floor of the House where everyone could see. If there were objections to the procedure the hon. member should have raised them then.