The so called Liberal gov has been stopped in its tracks!
at least until the next time/
Democracy is work
____________
Null and Void: Speaker of the House of Commons Strikes Down Numerous Bill C-10 Amendments
The government’s desperate attempt to pass Bill C-10 took another turn yesterday as the Speaker of the House of Commons declared many amendments “null and void”. The ruling came after the committee studying the bill voted on them despite a ruling from committee chair Scott Simms that doing so was a violation of the gag order limiting debate. As a result of MPs overruling the chair, the committee proceeded to vote on dozens of undisclosed amendments without any debate or discussion. The secretive law making process attracted considerable attention and once the bill returned to the House – complete with another attempt from Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault to limit debate – Conservative MP Blake Richards challenged those amendments on a point of order. The Speaker of the House agreed and declared the amendments null and void.
While the government has already tabled new motions in the House of Commons as it seeks to bring back the amendments, the Speaker ruling has several consequences. First, opposition MPs from all parties have also re-introduced their amendments. For example, the Conservatives have introduced a motion to bring back Section 4.1, the provision designed to safeguard user generated content that was removed by the government. In doing so, all MPs will now have to take a position on the issue as part of a vote. In all, there are now 22 motions before the House on Bill C-10, calling into question the viability of the government’s attempt to limit debate at this stage to just one hour. Moreover, the government is also seeking time allocation on another bill (Bill C-12) and has hours of debate left on its budget bill.
Second, the Speaker’s ruling provides an important reminder of how the government and Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs were willing to overrule the committee chair and proceed to vote on undisclosed amendments without any debate, discussion or experts available to answer questions. The Speaker’s ruling points out how rare the gag order was to begin with:
As was recently pointed out, we have few examples of time allocation motions applied to committee consideration of bills. Until last week, we had no example of such a motion being adopted since February 2001, when the House made important Standing Order modifications in regard to committee consideration of bills and the selection of report stage motions. There are few precedents involving the imposition of such an order on a committee.
Thank you Mchael Geist, Open media and anyone else taking action against this folly Bill C10
____________________________
