Peter Milliken

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, March 27th, 1995]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think you would find the consent of the House, to save time, that we dispense with putting the question to the House on Motions Nos. 2, 3, 5 and 7, and that they be deemed to have been put to the House as we did on Saturday morning in respect of the other bill.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 121 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.

[Petitions, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition today signed by numerous residents of the province of Ontario, many from Kingston, some from Toronto, Waterloo and Thornhill.

The petitioners pray and call upon Parliament to put an end to discriminatory treatment in Canada of gay and lesbian citizens and their familiar relationships by amending federal legislation which currently allows unequal treatment, including an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

[Government Response To Petitions, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 25 petitions.

[The Tragically Hip, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House to congratulate the Tragically Hip for their success last night in winning two Junos: entertainer of the year and group of the year.

The Hip have now won five Junos, including entertainer of the year for the third time. The group of Gord Downie, Gord Sinclair, Paul Langlois, Johnny Fay and Robbie Baker is from my riding of Kingston and the Islands and has a strong commitment to the Kingston community.

The entertainer of the year award is voted on by fans and is testimony to the band's wide appeal in Canada. The Tragically Hip sold out its recent 20-event tour of Canada in three days and has sold over 500,000 copies of its recent album "Day for Night".

While the Hip was winning Junos and praise in Canada on the weekend, it was also making a break into the American market with an appearance on "Saturday Night Live".

I join with millions of Canadians in congratulating the Tragically Hip on its success and wish it further great singing in the future.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of clarification, I certainly agree with what the hon. member said about the authority of the Parliament of Canada to amend laws and to amend the section of the Constitution Act we have been discussing.

However, the problem is, in my opinion, that this cannot be done unless the government includes a clause to that effect in the bill before second reading. That is the problem we have today. There is no amendment to the Constitution Act in Bill C-69. So the hon. member cannot use an amendment to make this kind of change in the bill. He must do so in a separate bill which is not now before the House.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with respect to the admissibility of the procedural acceptability of Motion No. 4 standing in the name of the hon. member for Bellechasse which purports to amend clause 16 of the bill now before the House.

I realize Your Honour is about to make a ruling in respect of the procedural admissibility of a number of proposed amendments. However, I want to speak to this particular one because in my submission it fails to comply with the practices of the House in regard to such amendments.

The effect of the amendment, if it were accepted by the House, would be to change the method of calculating the number of seats assigned to each province under the Constitution Act. I have concerns about that because the Constitution Act is not up for a review or a revision in the amendments that are before the House under Bill C-69.

The bill, as agreed to in principle at second reading, has nothing whatever to do with the calculation of the number of seats for each province, but is entirely confined to the determination of the boundaries within each province for each of the districts after the calculation has been done in conformity with section 51 of the Constitution Act, 1867. The Constitution Act could have been amended in the bill that was put before the House but it was not.

If I may review for you, sir, the legislative history of this bill, Your Honour will recall that there was a motion brought before the House instructing the procedure and House affairs committee to undertake a study in relation to various matters outlined in the motion which included a review, if necessary, of section 51 of the Constitution Act in so far as the allocation of seats among provinces was concerned.

The committee did this study and filed a report in the House with the draft bill in it. The draft bill contained no reference to section 51 of the Constitution Act. The bill that the government subsequently introduced in response to a concurrence motion on the committee's report is Bill C-69 and it also contains no reference to section 51 of the Constitution Act.

What we have here is an opportunity, afforded by the hon. member in putting this motion, to make changes to other acts which in my view are outside the principle of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act which is currently before the House. It is a whole new act but it deals with the adjustment of electoral boundaries, not with the assignment of seats to provinces. It is a different matter and is dealt with in a different statute and always has been dealt with in a different statute.

The amendment proposed by the hon. member for Bellechasse is a backdoor attempt to amend section 51 of the Constitution Act. He has used the word notwithstanding but it does not get the proposer of the amendment off the hook. It is an attempt to amend another act which is in no way open for amendment by Bill C-69 as agreed to in principle at second reading.

The amendment goes beyond the principle of the bill as agreed to at second reading and opens up an entirely different subject not dealt with by the bill before the House.

I would like to quote from Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 698 which says in part:

An amendment which is out of order on any of the following grounds cannot be put from the chair:

(1) An amendment is out of order if it is irrelevant to the bill, beyond its scope or governed by or dependent upon amendments already negatived.

(8)(a) An amendment may not amend a statute which is not before the committee.

There are various references in support of each of those citations.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that had this amendment been put in the committee after second reading of the bill, that is, not in its prestudy, but in its own study or in its own draft bill, in an amendment to the bill, as committee chair, I would have had no option but to rule it out of order because in my view it is beyond the scope of the bill.

It should be pointed out that attempts to use the word notwithstanding in order to sneak in a back door amendment to a statute not before the House is not a new device, nor is it one that the House has accepted.

In earlier years, previous governments were sometimes called to order for trying to legislate through estimates. This is an unacceptable process whereby statutes other than appropriation acts were amended by adding words or items in the estimates. One of the more frequent patterns of attempting to do this was to insert words in the item that notwithstanding such and such an act, the following shall be done or not be done, as the case may be.

I checked the precedent for this. On March 10, 1971 at pages 4126 and 4127 of Hansard , Mr. Speaker Lamoureux rendered a decision in respect of the supplementary estimates ( c ) for the financial year ending March 31, 1971. In a ruling on a motion that was brought forward by the President of the Privy Council, Mr. MacEachen, to refer these supplementary estimates to committee, Mr. Speaker Lamoureux ruled that certain of the supplementary estimates were not properly before the House because they purported to amend statutes through the estimates process and therefore went beyond what estimates could do.

The words that were used in the estimates fit the description of the words being used in this amendment. As Mr. Speaker Lamoureux pointed out on page 4126:

Let us, if you will, examine the items singled out by the hon. members. The first one is vote 35c. It proposes to amend the Pension Act and the Civilian War Pensions and Allowances Act. The vote proposes to repeal schedules A and B of the Pension Act and substitute therefor new schedules A and B as found in vote 35c.

I could go on but I do not need to read it all. The point is that the Speaker found the estimates were seeking to amend statutes and of course those statutes were not before the House for amendment. The Speaker held, I think very properly, that the practice of amending statutes by the estimates was out of order. He made that ruling on page 4127. He said that "in view of the situation created by the new rules, these items are not before the House in proper form". He declined to allow them to go to committee.

Mr. Speaker, if that was the view then, I suggest that same view must apply to this amendment. What the hon. member for Bellechasse is trying to do is amend the Constitution Act,

section 51, by amending this bill and by simply saying that notwithstanding and it is changed so this and such happens.

Successive Speakers have found this was an unacceptable device because the word notwithstanding did not disguise the real purpose which was to amend another act not opened by the estimates process. The same rule must apply in respect of this act.

The provisions of the Constitution Act 1867 are in no way opened up by Bill C-69. The word notwithstanding does not disguise the fact that the only purpose of the proposed amendment is in fact to open those provisions of another act which would have not been opened by the bill and which should therefore not be opened up by this amendment.

I invite Your Honour to rule that the amendment is out of order and not properly before the House at this time.

[Criminal Code, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I think you will find there is an understanding in the House that in respect of this bill the minister will be the one speaker for the government. For the official opposition there will be two speakers who will divide the 40-minute period allotted to the second speaker in this debate without questions or comments. For the third party in the House there will be a similar arrangement in respect of the 40-minute period they would otherwise have. Then there will be a 20-minute speech from a member of the New Democratic Party. That should conclude the debate.

[Maintenance Of Railway Operations Act, 1995, March 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member wants to speak, he will have to deal with the motion we will be moving in this House. I suggest therefore that the Orders of the Day be called.