Stephen Taylor poses the following, regarding the Ruby Dhalla nanny thing (which I absolutely refuse to “gate”):

Just a few minutes ago, the House of Commons unanimously endorsed a report produced by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration which included the following recommendation,

[snip]

The Liberals had a chance to amend the motion in the House today, but perhaps they were asleep at the switch?

Since this report is a faster page turner than the new Dan Brown novel, I’m sure everyone has gotten to page 26 by now (page 34 on the document viewer on Taylor’s site), which contains the Liberals’ disenting opinion.

And, as I’m sure you’re all familiar with the House of Commons Procedure and Practice (2009) book (just $19.95 at Amazon.com – makes a great Christmas gift!), you’ll know that you can’t amend the text to a committee report at concurrence in the House. Like, duh!

“When a motion to concur in a report is before the House, it is the concurrence in the report as a whole which the House is considering. No amendment may be presented to the text of the report.” Pp 1074

“A motion for concurrence in a committee report is debatable. No amendment may be presented to the text of the report (…)” Pp 459

So, really, who’s the one asleep at the switch here?