Greetings All. Contrary to my earlier expectations, today's session in the House of Commons (Friday 20 May) did include two periods of debate on Government Orders. Unfortunately the time allotted for both periods was taken up entirely with debate on Bill C-9. There was no debate today on Bill S-18 or any of the other Bills currently shown on the Projected Order of Business. It would appear that on any given sitting day, appearance of a Bill on the Projected Order of Business is not a guarantee that it will be debated on that day. My assumption now is that once on the POB, a Bill should remain there until it has been dealt with. If the Bills on the POB are dealt with continuously, in the order in which they appear on the POB, it would appear that Second Reading debate of Bill S-18 is unlikely to begin until close to the time when Parliament would normally recess for the summer on 9 June 2005. By my estimate the four government Bills currently shown on the POB before Bill S-18, if dealt with consecutively, will take up a minimum of 14 to 16 hours of debate. With Government Orders normally taking up two hours of debate per day, it would take 7 to 8 sitting days before they get to start debate of Bill S-18. There are currently only nine sitting days left until the normal date that Parliament would recess for the summer. One media report has shown the last day of sitting as 23 June which would indicate that the session has been extended by ten days. However I have yet to see anything official indicating that such is the case. I expect if I am incorrect in any of my assumptions here, that Jeff will likely correct me. Happy Hunting. Gordon A. Watts gordon_watts@telus.net Co-chair, Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census en francais http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm Permission to forward without notice is granted