​You may have missed it amid the cacophony over the finance minister’s personal finances, or the auditor-general’s latest scathing exposé of bureaucratic incompetence, or the perennial cross-aisle battles over skyrocketing taxes and ballooning deficits, or any of the other half-dozen or so political controversies dominating the discourse in the Commons, but this week, we got to watch a small but significant bit of parliamentary history being made.

And while I’ll almost certainly end up writing about at least one of the above-mentioned headline-grabbing topics before the curtain falls on the chamber for the Christmas break, this week, let’s shift our focus from the storm and fury of the front-bench to the New Democrat backbencher who is about to become the first rank-and-file MP to formally fight for her right to have the House as a whole decide the fate of her private members’ bill.

The story so far: earlier this year, rookie MP Sheila Malcolmson, who represents the seaside riding of Nanaimo–Ladysmith, in British Columbia, introduced a private members’ bill to force the federal government to come up with a comprehensive national strategy to clean up the shipwrecks and abandoned vessels clogging up coasts across the country.

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This, in itself, was not an exceptionally noteworthy occurrence — over the course of even a brief tenure in the House, most backbenchers will offer up at least one such initiative — but Malcolmson had a built-in advantage. Back at the start of the 42nd Parliament, she had managed to land in a relatively high spot on the lottery-generated list that lays out the order in which such bills can be brought to the floor of the House, and this fall, her number came up.

But just weeks before she was set to rise in the House to formally launch the first round of debate on her proposal, the government brought in its own bill to deal with abandoned vessels.

While not identical to Malcolmson’s pitch, the draft legislation was sufficiently similar that the all-party panel of MPs tasked with conducting a pre-review of private members’ business before it can be added to the House rotation concluded that it effectively rendered Malcolmson’s bill redundant, and voted to designate it as “non-votable.”

Malcolmson would still be free to bring it to the floor, but at the end of the time allotted for second-reading debate, it would simply drop from the order paper without so much as a voice vote.

This isn’t the first time the subcommittee on private members’ business has handed down such a ruling, of course. It usually happens at least once or twice during every parliament, at which point the sponsoring MP can either pick another bill or motion to bring forward, or proceed with their original choice despite the fact that it will never make it to a second-reading vote.

Under those same rules, Malcomson was permitted to appeal to the full procedure and House affairs committee to overrule the subcommittee’s recommendation, but while the Conservatives at the table teamed up with the lone New Democrat member to support her, the Liberal MPs, who hold the majority, blocked her bid to overturn it.

Malcolmson, however, wasn’t ready to give up, and late last week, she became the first MP in Canadian parliamentary history to invoke a never-used provision in the standing orders to put the question to the House itself.

Over the next few days, MPs will be able to vote, via secret ballot, on a motion to restore C-352 to full votable status.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it will make it through a second-reading vote, mind you — it could still go down to defeat in the chamber.

Still, if she succeeds in overturning the committee-decreed designation, Malcolmson will have ensured that the fate of her proposed fix will, at least, be decided in public and on the record, by the House as a whole.

But even if she fails to garner the necessary secret ballot support, Malcolmson’s procedural moxie may have already served to embolden her backbench colleagues on both sides of the House, and could very well inspire more MPs to go to the same lengths to defend their parliamentary rights in future.

This particular provision has, after all, been on the Commons books since the mid-2000s, yet until last week, not a single MP had ever taken advantage of it. To be fair, it’s entirely possible that in many cases where it could’ve been invoked but wasn’t, the MP who could’ve invoked it had no idea such a process existed.

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But in 2013, Conservative MP Mark Warawa publicly mused about launching a similar campaign to salvage his motion on sex-selective abortion, which was also declared non-votable by the all-party subcommittee.

Ultimately, he chose not to push the issue, and it’s not hard to see why: given the context, it would undoubtedly have been viewed by those outside caucus — and, for that matter, by a good number within it — as a veiled challenge to the official position of both his party and the government of the day, which was, it’s fair to say, not particularly thrilled by his attempt to put the issue of abortion back on the agenda.

As an opposition member, Malcolmson is, admittedly, in a much less politically tricky position, as far as going up against the government’s bill: she has the full support of both her caucus leadership and her fellow New Democrats.

But who’s to say that, at some point over the next two years, a Liberal backbencher — or, beyond that timeframe, any backbencher aligned with the governing party caucus of the day — won’t find themselves in a similar situation and be inspired to make a similar stand, even if it means breaking ranks with their own front bench?

Given what happened to New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, who was the lone MP on his side of the House to vote with the Conservatives on a motion critical of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s bid to crack down on corporate tax loopholes, they could use a positive example right now — and if Malcolmson can provide one, she can consider her legacy to the Commons assured even if she never gets the chance to see a bill through to become the law of the land.