Amendments and Subamendments to Motions / Relevance

Subamendment; beyond scope of amendment

Journals pp. 1333-4

Debates pp. 11114-5

Background

While the House debated the amendment of Mr. Baldwin (Peace River) to the motion to concur in the third report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, Mr. Deachman (Vancouver Quadra) proposed a subamendment. The effect of Mr. Baldwin's amendment would be to return the report to the committee with an instruction to delete the proposed Standing Order 75C. The purpose of Mr. Deachman's subamendment was to instruct the committee to propose a standing order "by which a time allocation motion may be proposed by a Minister of the Crown in the event that no agreement could be obtained [among the parties]", and further, to clarify aspects of proposed Standing Order 75B. Mr. Baldwin requested the Speaker to consider if the subamendment was acceptable because it seemed "to introduce a completely new principle" to his amendment.

Issue

Does the subamendment go beyond the scope of the amendment?

Decision

Yes. It is beyond the scope of the limited amendment and is out of order.

Reasons given by the Speaker

The amendment is restricted exclusively to a reconsideration of Standing Order 75C and is thus very limited. The proposed subamendment goes beyond this by seeking "to do many things, one of them being to correct proposed Standing Order 75B ... The role of the Chair essentially is to see that discussion be relevant to the matter before the House and that amendments be essentially relevant to the questions before the House." The subamendment might be considered by the House only as an amendment to the main motion.

References

Debates, July 8, 1969, pp. 10962-3; July 11, 1969, pp. 11108-14.