Get ready to dust off those ballot boxes, House pages!

After an all-party committee nixed her bid to update the laws on cleaning up shipwrecks, a rookie New Democrat MP is planning to invoke a never-before-used parliamentary provision to appeal the decision to the House. Unlike most chamber proceedings, this one would be conducted behind the closed curtains of a makeshift Commons voting booth.

The backstory: Nearly two years ago, Nanaimo-Ladysmith New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson introduced a private members’ bill that she hoped would “reduce the environmental, economic and navigational hazards to Canadian waterways and coastlines posed by abandoned vessels.” She inherited the initiative from retired New Democrat MP Jean Crowder, who brought forward similar bills that never made it past first reading.

Malcolmson was lucky enough to score a relatively high slot on the private members’ waiting list, which is established by lottery at the start of each new Parliament.

In mid-October, her number came up and she became one of the fifteen MPs to be bumped up to the priority queue, putting her one step closer to being able to make the case for her bill on the floor of the Commons.

But on October 30, the Liberal government tabled the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, which would pre-empt Malcolmson’s bill as it deals with the same issue: how to manage abandoned vessels.

That, at least, was the collective conclusion of the Commons subcommittee charged with going over the fine print of backbencher-sponsored bills and motions before they can be added to the House lineup.

Just before the House broke for the mid-November hiatus, the Liberal and Conservative members of the three-MP panel teamed up to designate Malcolmson’s bill as ‘non-voteable’ on the grounds that private members’ business can’t address matters currently before the House as government business — even if, as is the case here, the private members’ bill was put on notice long before the government introduced its own legislation.

Despite a last-ditch campaign by Malcolmson and fellow B.C. New Democrat Peter Julian to persuade the full procedure and House affairs committee to overturn the decision, the designation stands, which effectively dooms the bill to being dropped from consideration after a cursory round of debate, without even putting it to a vote.

Unless, that is, Malcolmson can convince at least five other MPs from at least two parties to sign onto a formal appeal, at which point House Speaker Geoff Regan will be obliged to convene a vote — held via secret ballot over two sitting days — on a motion to reverse the committee ruling and declare the bill voteable.

This procedural tool has never actually been used — it was brought in under Prime Minister Paul Martin’s minority government in 2003 as part of a package of House rule changes aimed at strengthening the collective and individual powers of the back bench.

That’s why the secret ballot is crucial to the process: in theory, at least, it allows MPs to vote as they see fit, rather than as instructed by their caucus leaders, without fear of reprisal. (A similar logic is behind the longstanding tradition of electing a Speaker by secret ballot.)

Under the current Commons rules, Malcolmson will have until the end of next week to file the necessary paperwork, so stay tuned. We may be about to witness a small but deeply significant instance of parliamentary history in the making.