The Legislative Process / Miscellaneous

December 6, 1990

Debates, pp. 16357-9

On December 6, 1990, the Speaker gave a ruling concerning the grouping and selection of report stage motions in amendment to Bill C-84 respecting Petro-Canada.^[1] Following the ruling, Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill) rose on a point of order to comment on the ruling and the rejection of certain motions dealing with the environment, official languages and the oath to be taken by members of the board of directors of the corporation.^[2] He argued that the House, when considering Bill C-79, An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, had included a provision for Members of Parliament to take an oath. This provision, which was also beyond the scope of the Bill, yet was allowed to proceed and therefore, in Mr. Murphy’s view, the same principle should apply in this case. Following this, Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa—Vanier) rose on a point of order concerning the ruling out of order of amendments concerning the Official Languages Act stating that similar amendments had previously been ruled in order during consideration of another bill.^[3] The Speaker heard comments from another Member^[4] and then reiterated the reasons for his ruling. The texts of the Speaker’s comments to both points of order are reproduced below.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: I thank the honourable Member for Churchill for the intervention and also for his courtesy to the Chair in letting me know earlier this morning that he would want to make the point which he has made. He also understands, and he has indicated this to me, that the point he is making is not likely to result in a change in the ruling which the Chair has just given.

I wonder if I could take the House again into confidence with respect to these amendments. We have as much as possible been trying to have a process whereby the amendments would be the subject of very extensive discussion in some cases, certainly between the Member who is filing the amendment and the Table Officers.

When there is sufficient notice, that is a very practical and useful practice, and I thank all honourable Members for having cooperated as much as they have. Unhappily in this particular case there was very little notice for a lot of the amendments. I must tell the House that the Table Officers were working very late last night and also early this morning.

I anticipated there would perhaps be some discontent. I want to assure the honourable Member for Churchill that earlier this morning I went over all these amendments and I could anticipate perhaps the honourable Member’s feelings. Without getting into it in great detail here because I do not want to set precedents where I am required after having given a ruling to then go into a great explanation about it, there are distinctions that can be drawn, and had to be drawn, between the quite accurate observations the honourable Member for Churchill made with respect to Bill C-79 and the oath in that case and the oath in this particular bill.

If one examines the oath very carefully, it is not a simple oath. It is an oath with a very great deal of detail in it. It is those details which I felt clearly distinguished it from the oath in Bill C-79.

However, the honourable Member has in a very concise way put forward his feelings on this matter. They have been heard. I hope that on other occasions there will be time for more discussion than there was in this case because there was obviously very little.

I thank the honourable Member for his comments and also again his courtesy for giving the Chair notice that he wanted to make these points on the floor of the House…

I thank the honourable Minister for his intervention. I thought that I had made it clear that for procedural reasons there is a difference between a Crown corporation and what will become a privatized company. For that reason, procedurally I could not allow the amendment. I did say in my reasons “regrettably”. There it is; it is a procedural thing. It is not for me to speculate on how the matter could be remedied. That is a matter for Members and not a matter for the Chair to comment upon.

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1990-12-06