Mr. Speaker, I, too, await with great interest the question of privilege from my colleague from Timmins—James Bay. However, we have not yet resolved the issue that was raised earlier on the motion that was moved by the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.

You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the member sought and received unanimous consent to move her motion, and then when the Speaker asked whether that motion could be adopted, the request was denied. I cited at the time a precedent dating back and asked the table to look into this. I have found the precedent. It is a ruling by former Deputy Speaker Comartin, on June 12, 2014.

On June 12, 2014, the member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Philip Toone, moved a similar motion and there was unanimous consent to present the motion. Then when the Speaker asked if there was unanimous consent to adopt the motion, that was denied. At that time, there was a series of procedural questions, which I will not go into, but essentially Deputy Speaker Comartin ruled very clearly that in a case when consent was provided for moving the motion and then consent was denied for adoption of the motion, the member then had the right to move the motion, debate was not precluded and ultimately the House was called upon to vote on that question.

I think that the government member who denied adoption may have done that by mistake and the first opportunity should be to allow the motion to be adopted by unanimous consent. However, if it is not adopted by unanimous consent, the precedent is very clear.

This is a rare occurrence, and the last Speaker ruling that we have is very clear that because consent was given for moving the motion, the motion is now on the floor and adoption can either be done by unanimous consent or by a vote. I think all members would probably agree that it is much simpler just to adopt it by unanimous consent. Again, the precedent is very clear and I would ask you to uphold that ruling, Mr. Speaker.

Peter Julian

$568,566.00