Brent Rathgeber kills what used to be his bill

Brent Rathgeber’s attempts to amend his own bill failed this evening when he could not find sufficient support from his former Conservative colleagues. As a result, C-461 remained as rewritten by the Conservative members of the ethics committee.

On that note, Mr. Rathgeber stood on a point of order and informed the Speaker that, as the sponsor of the bill, he would not move concurrence, effectively stopping the bill from proceeding and killing it. The Speaker described this situation as “unprecedented”—apparently no private member has ever killed his or her own bill at report stage. Mr. Rathgeber appeared to receive a standing ovation from the opposition side after disowning the legislation.

Mr. Rathgeber’s amendments received the unanimous support of the New Democrats, Liberals, Bloc and Greens, as well as independent Maria Mourani. One Conservative (Michael Chong) supported Mr. Rathgeber’s amendments to remove the CBC provisions from the bill. Five Conservatives (Mr. Chong, John Williamson, Brad Trost, Peter Goldring and Rob Anders) and one independent (Dean Del Mastro) supported his amendments to set the salary-disclosure threshold at $160,200 (the changes made at the ethics committee had increased the threshold from the original $188,000 to $440,000).