Private Members' Business

Introduction

Private Members' Business, consisting of bills and motions presented by Members of Parliament who are not Ministers of the Crown, is taken up by the House during a period of the sitting day called Private Members' Hour. Since 1986, the Standing Orders governing Private Members' Business have undergone a number of fundamental changes and the application of these new Standing Orders and practices has occasionally given rise to difficulties requiring the intervention of the Chair.

Just prior to Speaker Fraser's term, the membership of the House had agreed to a series of provisional rule changes strongly influenced by the recommendations of a Special Committee on the Reform of the House which had been established in late 1984. This Committee, commonly known as "the McGrath Committee" named after its Chairman the Hon.  James McGrath (St. John 's East), presented three reports to the House, with its Third Report tabled in June 1985 containing sweeping recommendations with respect to the role of the private Member. Agreeing with one of its principal tenets, specifically upgrading the role of private Members, the House attempted through a number of Standing Order changes to improve the treatment of Private Members' Business and to provide more effective opportunities not only for the initiatives of private Members to be heard but also to be decided upon by the entire House.

The decisions selected for this chapter illustrate the issues which faced Speaker Fraser and the other Chair Occupants during this period of reform. Speaker Fraser was called upon to interpret a new Standing Order on petitions which impacted on Private Bill legislation, as well as to interpret a new Standing Order dealing with "similar items" of private Members' initiatives in the form of either bills or motions. In addition, he was called upon to respond to a question of privilege concerning the criteria used by the newly-instituted Standing Committee on Private Members' Business when deciding which items of Private Members' Business it selects as votable. Two of the rulings included in this chapter were in response to complaints about the manner in which Private Members' Public Bills were handled in legislative committees, while a further ruling concerned the right of a private Member to initiate debate on a subject, elements of which were already before the House through an initiative of the Government.