The Legislative Process / Stages

Third reading: amendment to recommit bill to committee; admissibility

May 8, 2008

Debates, p. 5632

On May 2, 2008, Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons) rose on a point of order with respect to the admissibility of an amendment moved by Dennis Bevington (Western Arctic) to Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. The amendment proposed that the Bill not be read a third time, but rather be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for the purpose of reconsidering clause 2. The Government House Leader argued that the amendment was inadmissible because it used the words “with a view to making sure that”. The Government House Leader noted that the phrase “making sure” gave a mandatory instruction to the Committee by providing instructions on how it should dispose of the Bill.^[1] After hearing from other Members, the Acting Speaker (Royal Galipeau) took the matter under advisement.

On May 8, 2008, the Speaker delivered his ruling. He declared that the amendment did not contravene any of the accepted principles for recommitting a bill to committee and that it was consistent with past practices of the House in this regard. He added that it was not a mandatory instruction to the Committee as it provided the latter with ample discretion to determine how it wished to reconsider the clause in question. Accordingly, he ruled the amendment in order.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised on Friday, May 2, 2008, by the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons concerning the admissibility of the amendment to the motion for third reading of Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, moved by the hon. Member for Western Arctic.

I would like to thank the Government House Leader for raising this matter, as well as the hon. Member for Vancouver East for her intervention.

The hon. Government House Leader contended that the amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Western Arctic was inadmissible because it sought to provide a mandatory instruction to the Committee. He was of the opinion that the use of the words “with a view to making sure that” in the amendment constituted a mandatory instruction on how the Committee should dispose of the Bill.

The hon. Member for Vancouver East, for her part, felt that the proposed amendment was clearly permissive. In her opinion, the words “with a view to”, contained in the amendment, support that argument.

As stated in House of Commons Procedure and Practice on pages 672 and 673, regarding amendments to the motion for third reading of a bill:

The purpose of such an amendment may be to enable the committee to add a new clause, to reconsider a specific clause of the bill or to reconsider previous amendments. However, an amendment to recommit a bill should not seek to give a mandatory instruction to a committee.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice also mentions further on page 793, with respect to instructions to Committees of the Whole, which also applies to standing committees:

Instructions to a Committee of the Whole dealing with legislation are not mandatory but permissive, that is the Committee has the discretion to decide if it will exercise the power given to it by the House to do something which it otherwise would have no authority to do.

The issue before us today is to determine if the amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Western Arctic meets the requirements as set out in our rules and practices, and more specifically, if it indeed constitutes a mandatory instruction to the Committee.

There are many precedents of similar amendments to the motion for third reading that have included the words “with a view to” combined with various action verbs akin to “making sure”. For example, amendments moved in the past have used the verbs “to ensure” on November 8, 2001, “to change” on January 31, 2003, “to eliminate” on March 4, 2004, and “to incorporate” on June 22, 2005, and all were ruled admissible. In fact, with time, this has become an established and accepted form for an amendment at third reading that seeks to recommit all or certain clauses of a bill.

In reviewing the texts of the amendment and of Bill C-33, I find that the amendment does not, in my view, infringe on any of the principles that I mentioned earlier and that form the basis of past practices of the House. The amendment asks the Committee to reconsider a clause of the Bill, taking into consideration certain issues, but it does not specify that any amendment is required or exactly how the Committee should modify the Bill to attain that objective. In my opinion, the text of the amendment provides the Committee ample discretion in how it wishes to reconsider the particular clause in question.

As such, I declare the amendment in order. I thank the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for bringing this issue to the attention of the House.