Mr. Chairman, just again to refresh the Members' memories on this report, it was a report on the review of Rule 70 of the Rules of the Legislative Assembly. I'll provide just a quick background. It's been some months since we've discussed this, but in October of '01, the Speaker directed our committee to conduct a review of Rule 70 because it was felt there may be some procedural difficulties with the provisions respecting the 120 day rule for standing committee review of bills. The rule states that the committee has 120 days to review a bill from the day it's referred to a committee until it must be reported back to the House, and it implies that if a committee has not reported a bill within the timeframe, then the sponsor of the bill is permitted to proceed with the bill in the Assembly. Complicating this is the occurrence that standing committees often take longer than 120 days to do their review, due to the size, scope and impact of the bill or the length between sittings of the Assembly. In all cases, implicit concurrence of the bill's sponsor is almost always that the government not to proceed with the bill until the essence of the committee report has been obtained. On two occasions this concurrence has been obtained in writing, while all others have been implied to mutual agreement.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the potential difficulty would arise under the present wording of Rule 70 if the bill's sponsor insisted on proceeding in the House with a bill that had not been reported from committee and the 120-day period had lapsed. The problem would stem from the lack of a mechanism to return to the bill to the House by way of placing it in some fashion on the Order Paper, most likely Committee of the Whole.

During the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures' consideration of the issue on December 9, 2002, and April 17, 2003, we discussed a number of options. Having the bill automatically appear on the Order Paper in Committee of the Whole 120 days after the second reading was deemed to be undesirable because it didn't take into account those numerous instances where the standing committee's review may be lengthy due to the complexity or nature of the bill. In addition there are occasions that the length of time between sittings of the House from spring to fall, for example, such that reporting with 120 days is not possible. The remedy would also preclude the continuation of a long-standing parliamentary convention of allowing bills to die in committee.

Mr. Chairman, the opinion of returning the bill to the House by order of the Speaker was not preferred because of the impartiality of the Speaker's position and the fact that the Speaker would theoretically, and as a rule of procedure, possess no direct knowledge of committee's activities or the wishes of the bill's sponsor in order to be able to ascertain whether a particular bill should be returned. So in considering the matter, Mr. Chairman, the rules committee decided that a mechanism was required to advise the House and the Speaker that it had not been reported within the required timeframe and that the bill's sponsor wished to proceed with the bill in the House. It was decided that this mechanism be incorporated into Rule 70 and be termed notice of intent. This notice of intent to proceed with a bill not reported would be given to the House by the bill's sponsor under the item Minister's statements on the Order Paper if it is a government bill, or under Members' statements if it is a private Member's public bill. The mechanism would then provide that on the third sitting day following receipt of a notice of intent to the House, the Speaker would place the bill on the Order Paper in Committee of the Whole.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, committee also feels it's necessary to provide a more formal avenue under the rules for a standing or special committee to secure an extension of the 120-day rule if it wishes to do so. The rules committee proposes that this be facilitated by an amendment to Rule 70 which would state that an extension may be requested by a motion in the Legislative Assembly under the item reports of committees on the review of bills. The Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures is of the opinion that this course of action takes into account the interests of all parties and provides and effective and efficient remedy to the issues hereby recommended to the House.

Mr. Chairman, we don't have a formal recommendation out of this, but I am prepared to have our staff develop a motion and bring that forward formally for us to deal with.