Bill C-475 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (order-making power)

This enactment amends the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to, among other things, give the Privacy Commissioner the power to make compliance orders and the Federal Court the power to impose fines in cases of non-compliance.

Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to the incorporation by reference in regulations act.

I feel I must pause for a moment and start from the very beginning. When I first arrived in Ottawa as a newly elected member of Parliament, scrutiny of regulations, or regs, as many call it, was the first committee that I served on. I was excited about it as I had expressed an interest prior on this particular committee and the very important work that it does. I soon discovered that some of my more experienced colleagues, upon hearing the news that I had joined the regs committee, were far more frequent to express condolences to me as opposed to congratulations.

Regs is not a committee that often makes headlines, and here I will digress for a brief moment. Shakespeare once famously wrote, “Thou crusty batch of nature”. As the member of Parliament for Papineau well knows, today we often express this sentiment much differently. The point I raise, as conveyed by Shakespeare, is it is not only what one says but rather how one says it that matters.

I submit that this same principle holds true for us as parliamentarians and more so when it comes to drafting technical legislation, although what we draft would probably not be seen as to rival Shakespeare. Though our intent may be clear, it is the language that we use that is of paramount importance. Unlike Shakespeare, government regulations should be able to evolve and adapt over time, along with technology and society, ensuring that the original intent be translated into language and standards that are clear and current. That is why I am here today supporting Bill S-12, the incorporation by reference in regulations act.

Members may ask what incorporation by reference is, aside from a potential new question in a future House of Commons' edition of Trivial Pursuit. Incorporation by reference, as outlined in Bill S-12, deals with a regulatory drafting technique. If the bill had a slogan attached to it, I would submit it would be called the “let us not reinvent the wheel act” when it comes to technical legislation and regulation. I would like to expand on that thought.

In Canada, we currently have many technical and highly regulated areas. Some examples of this include the regulation of medical devices, the control and collection of organs for donation and those regulations that govern shipbuilding standards. In many cases, these regulations may well be set by international or nationally recognized associations. The question is this. How do we encapsulate these regulations into legislation and, more rightfully, is there a more effective and efficient way to do that? Bill S-12 does exactly that. That is why I am here to support Bill S-12.

How does Bill S-12 work? In plain English the bill codifies the ability of government to use a commonly used drafting technique of incorporation by reference while clearly prescribing when and how the technique is to be used. Put another way, it enables regulations to incorporate external material without having to duplicate that material. by simply referencing it in the text of the regulation. This cuts down the onerous amount of material that would have to be included and duplicated in a number of regulations.

Further, by adding “as amended from time to time” to the reference of the external material, the regulation can stay current with any changes made to those standards without the regulation or legislation itself having to be amended or altered. This allows for regulations to be fluid, current and responsive. This in turn cuts down on unnecessary duplication of legislation and prevents regulations from becoming stale-dated.

Incorporation by reference is a widely used, common sense drafting technique, but this bill would legitimize it and place clear direction on its proper use.

I will provide another example of how this could work.

If a regulation provides that all hockey helmets must be manufactured in accordance with a particular Canadian Standards Association standard, the effect of that reference is to make that standard part of the regulation without actually needing to reproduce the text of the CSA standard in the regulation itself. The rules found in the Canadian Standards Association standard form part of the law, even though they are not repeated and reproduced in the regulation.

Frequently, technical standards like the Canadian Standards Association's standard used in this example are incorporated “as amended from time to time”. This means that when the Canadian Standards Association makes amendments to the standard to keep up to date with changes in technology or production methods or improvements in manufacturing and science, those changes are automatically included in the regulation; in other words, the changes made to the standard are incorporated into the regulation and become law without amending the text of the regulation. This is referred to as “ambulatory incorporation by reference”. Some people might refer to it as “dynamic incorporation by reference”.

In some cases and in certain circumstances, a legislator may desire a fluid parallel between legislation and regulation. In these circumstances, the regulations can still be frozen, based upon the regulations as they exist on a certain date. This is referred to as “static incorporation by reference”.

This means that only one particular version of the document is incorporated. In that case, regardless of what happens to the document after the regulations are made, it is only that version that is described in the regulation that is incorporated.

Incorporation by reference has become an essential tool and is increasingly relied upon by governments to more efficiently develop their regulations.

This approach also helps to standardize regulation in a universally understood language. That is of benefit to all.

Last year I was visited by representatives of the National Marine Manufacturers Association. One of the challenges expressed by the Canadian marine manufacturing industry is the difficulty they have in meeting different regulations in different markets that they need to access.

As members have heard before, I have said anything we can do to help Canadian industry access these markets, whether that means increased intergovernmental co-operation or collaboration, is a good thing and something I believe we should look at and support.

By incorporating the legislation of other jurisdictions with whom harmonization is desirable or by incorporating standards developed and respected internationally, regulations can minimize duplication and avoid repetition of the same material. It can avoid the need to reinvent the regulatory wheel, so to speak.

Incorporation by reference can minimize and even avoid undesirable barriers to trade, an issue that, as I pointed out earlier, has been identified by the Canadian National Marine Manufacturers Association.

Enactment of this legislation is a necessary, pertinent change for many of the reasons I have already outlined. These changes would also address the concerns raised by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations that I referenced earlier.

I should also add that the joint committee will continue to have the mandate to scrutinize how incorporation by reference is being used in accordance with this bill.

I submit that the enactment of this legislation is a logical, necessary next step to incorporation by reference in regulations.

Before I close, I would like to share one further point.

I am reasonably confident that most members of the House support the principles of innovation. Marketplaces are changing at record speed. Technology and new economies are emerging rapidly. I am certain that many of us could all share examples of exciting new developments that occur in their ridings, yet increasingly when I meet with a new employer who has an exciting new product or service being offered, market access is often one of the biggest barriers to trade that is mentioned. That is in large part because regulation does not keep pace with innovation.

There are a lot of good things in Bill S-12. The Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations has expressed concerns, and the government has listened to those concerns. There are more tools allowing for legislators to be able to choose, whether it be a dynamic form of incorporation by reference or a static one. Bill S-12 would allow us as legislators to have those tools for our regulatory process, not only to help open new markets but also to be able to respond to some of the international agreements that we have.

At one of the last meetings I attended with the scrutiny of regulations committee, an international accord was brought up. It is certainly a challenge for the committee and also for the government to keep up with the changes that are involved in that accord.

When the government presents something that is just common sense and is within our Canadian interest, something that would allow greater clarity and a greater understanding of the rules to allow us to be able to harmonize with other markets and encourage our industry to reach out and expand, while the term “incorporation by reference” may not make most people smile, it is an important thing.

I ask that every member in the House support Bill S-12 and move it on to the next stage. It is a common sense bill. It is a practical bill. I ask the House to support it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is riveting and is receiving enthusiastic support from around the House. We are often called upon to debate issues of the day, issues of great passion, issues that stir controversy in the hearts and minds of Canadians, and then we have other days.

Perhaps I am wrong in my sense of the debate, but I have two questions.

One is that as the official opposition, we have a question as to which documents should be precluded from incorporation by reference. There are regulations that we seek to enhance and regulations that we seek to unify with either international or national standards, but in some industries this does not work as well. I am wondering if my colleague across the way, sitting on the committee as he does, has any thoughts on that at all.

There is a second central question I have in approaching what is predominantly a technical bill.

The devil always lies in the details, both of the bill and in how we arrived at the piece of legislation. What kind of consultation went on with the provinces and industry stakeholders to arrive at this bill?

I know there have been several iterations of this piece of legislation and that the legislation has been called for and worked on for some time, but some regulations cross provincial-federal jurisdiction and how things are regulated. My colleague mentioned sporting equipment and safety gear. There are things that do not perfectly fall within one jurisdiction or another, so one would assume that there has been at least some consultation with the provinces that will be affected, particularly those provinces with a strong manufacturing base. I am thinking of Quebec, Ontario, parts of Alberta and B.C. where industries there will be affected.

Does the member know what steps the government took in those consultations? As well, are there any documents that we would want to preclude from incorporation by reference because those particular regulations are just not appropriate for a particular industry?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I really welcome a question from a fellow member from B.C. today.

Specifically I will start with the first question: to which industry should this apply? Again, as the hon. member mentioned in his preamble, the devil is in the details. That is one of the reasons Bill S-12 proposes to allow us to use the tool in either static or dynamic form. The great part about it, and what has me excited as a legislator, is that we get to decide the appropriate path to progress forward.

The second question asked about consultation with the provinces. From my understanding, it is actually the Joint Standing Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations that has expressed concern with the use of incorporation by reference. It wanted the government to clarify how it codified its own regulations.

I do know, through the divisions of powers and also through court and case law that if, for example, a particular activity is being done in a particular province, it is typically addressed through provincial law, meaning that the province may decide to incorporate its own incorporation by reference, but if it passes from one province to another, then it is usually governed at the federal level.

One of the great things about our federation is that there is a constant discussion about this. Again, the court and case law on these kinds of things is quite clear.

I look forward to other questions like those of the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is an issue of concern in regard to incorporation by reference that exists not so much within Canada's borders but with respect to international standards.

Canada is a bilingual nation, and many of the standards that might be adopted are of one language. My question is in relation to that. How does the current legislation take into consideration the need for Canada to have regulations in both languages?

When we take a reference, as an example, and we say we do not have to change the details of the Canadian Gazette, because in there we now have a reference to X, which happens to be an international standard, and that document might only be in English, how does that work in terms of translation?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is an obligation by government to make sure that regulations, especially federal regulations, are available in both French and English. That is well established by the courts, and this government has honoured that in all that it does.

The second part I would like to focus on is that this is a changing world. We live in a globally competitive economy. I would like to know from this member whether or not he supports the idea of Canadian industry reaching out and trying to open up new areas, new markets, so that Canadian industry and Canadian jobs can be advanced.

I really hope the member for Winnipeg North can bear that in mind, and I am hoping this House will support Bill S-12 as it is presented.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, whom I was very pleased to support when he brought forward legislation to free the transport of wine from one province to another.

Unfortunately, I have no enthusiasm whatsoever, but great trepidation and concern that what appears to be innocent—incorporation by reference—will do serious damage to the scrutiny of regulations in this place.

There is a reason we do not say a law is passed and then incorporate by reference large swathes of changes that do not allow the average citizen to stay on top of what is happening to laws that affect them. On the contrary, this kind of change will undermine the ability of Canadian business to know what regulations apply to them and when they have been changed.

Yes, it is true that there are systems of government that are far more efficient than democracy, but the rule of law matters in democracies, and as benign as this bill sounds, it is a dangerous move.

I cannot support Bill S-12.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's previous support of my changes to the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act.

One of the challenges we have is there is a not very well understood point that the House, Parliament, has sovereignty over what treaties it becomes part of to what standards are chosen.

As I said to the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, we have the choice, as legislators, to choose static or dynamic, depending upon what is in our best interest.

I would ask the member to keep an open mind and to visit the scrutiny of regulations committee to listen in. That committee does a very noble service by ensuring that when those statutes are translated into regulations, parliamentarians continue to scrutinize to ensure that not only are the regulations bona fide as per the statute, but that they are not unreasonably burdensome.

I would encourage the member to look at Bill S-12 as being more tools in the toolbox that would allow legislators like ourselves to decide what is in our national interest.

Bill S-12 is in our national interest based on those points.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is one piece of the member's speech that is a bit unclear for me.

I am the deputy critic for persons with disabilities and the word “accessible” has a different meaning when seen through the lens of someone with a disability.

I would ask the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla to explain to the House whether the word “accessible” means that persons with visual disabilities, or hearing disabilities or ambulatory disabilities would have access to the regulations or whether the word “accessible” just means that it is out there somewhere for somebody to get.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the concerns that the member might have.

Let me be clear. Parliament would still continue to put forward statutes, statutes which would then say whether it was static or dynamic form of regulation, incorporation by reference would take place if any and then those regulations still would have to go through The Gazette process, where there would be an open process that anyone could submit to.

I know accessibility is an important part for this government. I recently raised this very point about accessibility to websites to Shared Services Canada and it was quite happy to hear that information.

I would encourage, if the member has further concerns on accessibility issues, to work with our government to again seek a better Canada, whether that means opening new markets, or ensuring that regulations are both clear and forthright and up to date or by making them as accessible through those websites as possible.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be here this evening with everyone to discuss Bill S-12 on existing rules for many products and on very specific and even very technical issues.

I will make most of my comments in English and I will try to understand not only the substance of this Senate bill, but also the future process for Canadians who will be affected by this statute.

In general, an important distinction to make is that the official opposition, through the good work of our member for Gatineau, will support the bill through to second reading and study at committee.

Some have called the bill a technical housekeeping bill. It attempts to bring together a number of different ideas and allows for certain powers that are meant to help the Canadian economy, regulatory authorities and government to have some sort of consistent standards.

We heard from my friend from Saanich earlier that there may be some concerns as to the supremacy of Parliament to continue to make standards that fit with our traditions and our cultural institutions.

We have also raised some significant questions that bear consideration at committee as to what “accessibility” will actually mean once this bill becomes law, as it seems it might. We never would want to say a piece of legislation is not of great urgency, but this is one of the pieces of legislation that the government saw fit to begin the midnight sittings.

I know all my hon. colleagues across the way love midnight sittings and are keen for them. They are chest-thumping right now as I speak and it is the more the merrier. Maybe we could see the clock at 11:50 p.m., if there were some sort of consideration to this.

The important thing in looking at the way the bill has come together is that the source has to be mentioned. There may be some openness to my earlier suggestion. We may or may not test the room a little later.

However, the source of this bill is important, as it is comes from the Senate. There is a lot going on in the Senate right now. It is not focused like a laser. The NDP and Canadians might argue that it is having some institutional challenges. Therefore, while the bill itself might seem somewhat innocuous and neutral in tone, its source is given new suspicion because Canada's so-called chamber of sober second thought might not be so sober these days and might not be giving much second thought to things because of the preoccupation of accounting practices and the recent involvement of the Prime Minister's Office in trying to manage certain problems for the government.

The government uses private members' legislation quite frequently to move what are obviously parts of the government agenda. Rather than using the many tools available to it, it goes through a back door, through the private members' bill route.

The government is also increasingly uses the Senate to introduce bills that fit into the government's particular mandate, and the scrutiny, if one can call it that, that goes on in the Senate is obviously much less. The amount of oversight from the public and the amount of openness from the red chamber is greatly diminished.

While this is a technical bill, its implications actually have a great effect on the everyday lives of people and the businesses and people who we seek to represent. It sets out the rules and how rules will then be incorporated from regulations and standards.

With respect to my friend from Okanagan—Coquihalla, over a number of elections there has been much turnover in this place. We sometimes lament that because we lose that institutional knowledge from time to time, the wisdom and experience. However, it also brings in new energy and excitement for particular committees, of which there is little to be found. I am glad we found a new member from British Columbia who brings the rigour and excitement to the regulations and standards committee, a committee wherein sometimes it is a straw-drawing exercise as to who ends up there, yet it is fundamentally important.

The committee is not often fought over, not the way one would usually fight over appointments to committee, but the scrutiny of regulations committee is a vital committee to a lot of businesses that rely on this. There might not be a wide audience for this debate tonight because it is a niche market one might say. However, those who are interested are extremely interested in what Parliament will do with this legislation and that we get it right.

What is important and at the heart of the matter is a bill originating from the unaccountable, unelected and now under investigation Senate causes us to pay a bit more attention. We want to ensure that the way this legislation was put together was done right and that somebody with some seriousness was involved in its creation. This legislation has some iterations, so we will give it the serious consideration it deserves because of the impacts about which I talked.

We mentioned in the earlier discussion this evening what regulations one might extrapolate from this, such as safety equipment, sports equipment, medical equipment. If regulations drawn up in some dusty civil servant's office are done poorly and then complied with, then those regulations come to life and have some effects and in some cases very serious effects.

I had the opportunity to move a piece of private members' business in my first term here. I was early up in the lottery and moved a bill to remove a type of chemical toxin out of a product that was a softener for plastics. Lo and behold, the bill had wide appeal because it was a known carcinogen, it was an endocrine disrupter and it affected children particularly. The bill received unanimous support of the House, passed through the House, but died in the Senate now that I recall the full story.

Going through the process of seeing the legislation through, it was the regulations that industry suddenly became very excited about and it started making patently outrageous claims, as was proven in the end, because it was worried about harmonization.

The chemical we were talking about was meant to soften plastic, as I said, and it was used in the production of blood collection bags and the tubes that connected them to the patient. There was a hue and cry from the Canadian industry that said if my bill were to pass and this chemical were removed, there were no alternatives. The comment from Industry was that people would die on the operating tables in Canada because of the bill. It was a pretty strong claim and it left a number of members of Parliament wondering if they would be committing murder by voting for my bill.

Then we found out, through regulations and standards, that the Americans had already moved toward eliminating this known carcinogen and that the Europeans had been for a number of years well in advance of Canada in taking known carcinogens out of the industrial system. In the end, one could only describe it as some sort of apathy and laziness on the part of Canadian industry, which had simply not been forced or required to move to the international standard in the production of these blood bags and the tubes that connected them to patients.

It was a strange moment because it became so technical. We started with a good principle that was supported by the House, but the whole debate boiled down to and hung in the balance over some regulation and standard that we as parliamentarians had little to no knowledge of it. Most of us do not come to this place with the experience and enthusiasm of my friend from Okanagan—Coquihalla, certainly not so specific a knowledge as to know whether this chemical was required.

Needless to say, we brought in some witnesses from Europe and the United States and they corrected our Canadian industry. Our industy quickly replaced the known carcinogen and replaced it with something much more innocuous and nobody died. A few less people might have had their endocrines disrupted and maybe a bit less cancer was caused.

If this is a housekeeping bill, which it appears to be in some ways, then what happens at committee becomes quite important. As members of Parliament, we do not have the wherewithal or the particular expertise to know whether this form of regulation should be moved and whether it is static or dynamic or whether it is good for this circumstance or that. We are going to rely on expert witnesses.

We just recently had the Library of Parliament conduct a study for the official opposition. We asked the library a very simple and specific question. Of all the legislation that had been moved through the House since the Conservatives came to power and until now, not in a majority but the previous minority Parliament, of all the amendments that had been moved by any member of the opposition, what per cent had been rejected?

I thought it would be high, but I did not realize that it would be this high: 99.3% of all amendments were rejected. Some members on the other side, on the blue team, might claim that 99.3% of the amendments were terrible. I see a few votes. I hesitated to ask the question.

We need to understand where amendments come from and the process for a bill. Oftentimes, committee members rely on the testimony of the witnesses in front of us, because 99% of the time, they know more than we do. What we do as MPs is try to weigh the testimony in front of us and understand what is the most credible and what is backed up by the most evidence. We then move that into an amendment and work with the Library of Parliament to construct an amendment that would improve the bill.

If that is how the legislative process is meant to work, then clearly, if virtually 100% of all the amendments proposed and worked on by the New Democrats and the Liberals are being rejected out of hand, the process, for political reasons, is not working very well. It is no great disservice to us in the opposition alone. However, it is a disservice to the members of the Canadian public who sent us here, because we are choosing some sort of political expediency rather than accepting the idea that maybe the legislation as crafted the first time is not perfect. For a bill as technical as this one, I would hope that because it does not stir as many of those ideological and partisan motivations, the government members on the committee, who form a majority, will be open to amendments, regardless of who moves them.

If we have said that the thing is important for industry and important for the consumers who rely on the products, then certainly getting the legislation right is also important. It is important that we hand over powers to move these static and dynamic regulations up through standards, that we not duplicate the process and that we do that well. However, we should not do some sort of roughshod approach to regulations in general because sometimes, and I would suggest that this comes more from my colleagues across the way than it does from our side, in the political dynamic, all rules and regulations are treated as always bad, always inefficient and always cumbersome. Of course, that is not true. Of course, a society without rules and regulations to guide the manufacturing of products and the cleanliness of the water we seek to drink and the safety of our roads would be chaotic.

It may often be politically appealing to suggest that the problem with our economy right now is red tape. I ran a small business before getting into politics, and there were some things I encountered that made no sense. There was heavy duplication or having to answer questions that had nothing to do with the business I was running. However, I understood the general purpose and intent, which was to ensure that it was not caveat emptor only that guided and protected the consumer. It was not simply a case of picking up that package of hamburger or that new car off the lot. If the regulations are not going to protect people, and government is not going to play that role, then it is simply one's own wherewithal and the interest of the producer to always hold to higher standards. Most producers and manufacturers do, and some do not.

I represent a riding that has a large agricultural base. I can sit with the farmers and ranchers in my area, particularly on the ranching side, and they will say the same thing: they need good, solid, clear regulations. Business people often talk about clarity. They want to talk about certainty. They want to know what the rules are so that they can anticipate and make the investments they need to make over the long term so that their businesses are healthy and they can hire more people. What they do not like is uncertainty or rules that change for political reasons or some blowing-in-the-wind, weather-vane approach to the rules that guide us. Business hates that, particularly the larger they get and when they are more capital-intensive businesses.

I am now thinking of what has gone on with the Environmental Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act, which are regulations to guide industry and people to make sure that we try to balance that natural tension between the environment and the economy to ensure that while we are creating prosperity and wealth, we are not downgrading and degrading our natural ecosystem and environment, because over time, we know where that leads. We have enough examples in the world to understand that. However, I do not think, when it comes to climate change, we are taking it at all seriously in this place and perhaps in other Parliaments as well.

The government took a memo from industry, particularly from the oil and gas lobby recently, prior to last summer. The memo included 12 recommendations, requests for changes to the Environmental Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act, principally. The government moved all 12 through, but not through open debate here in the House. It moved them through omnibus legislation.

I talked to some of the industry reps about this. They had no idea they were going to get all 12 accepted. They were more in a negotiating position. They were offering up their first volley and would get something less back and would negotiate down. They were a bit shocked. The downside for industry, and I would suggest the downside for the government, is that it has eroded the faith of the public as to whether those laws are in place to protect our fisheries and our environment and whether they are strong enough. There are new doubts and aspersions cast upon the oil and gas industry writ large, the good actors and the bad. The companies that keep a good safety record and the ones that do not are all painted with the same brush. That is unfortunate for industry. That creates more uncertainty.

In the attempt to smooth over those rough edges of regulations and standards, the government ended up poisoning the conversation for many Canadians who have natural and normal considerations and concerns when talking about a large-scale development, be it the oil sands or a pipeline out of a particular place or a large mine. That does not seem right to me, and it is not balanced. It has actually drawn back the conversation a number of years, when we have spent decades building up strong and healthy protections for the environment, and almost a century for our fisheries, and they are now gone. Canadians then have to turn to other means and other understandings and conversations, because their voices are going to be heard. Whether Conservatives try to shut us down or not, it is going to happen.

In terms of this legislation and what we do when we get it to committee, it is going to be absolutely critical that the government play nice in allowing witnesses from sometimes both sides of an issue. There may be consumer protection groups, civil liberties groups and accessibility groups, as my friend from Toronto raised earlier, that may have some questions. When we talk about accessible, let us define it.

Official languages groups, I think, will absolutely be interested in this, because generally speaking, and my friend from British Columbia will verify this, international standards are written in the so-called language of business: English. While we are guided by laws in this land that should protect both official languages, there is a bit of a rub. If a consumer or an industry in a francophone community seeks to get a regulation with some clarity, are they going to pay for the translation to understand that? Is the Quebec government going to have concerns? I imagine that it will. It may be well and good to say that we have rules and laws on the books already to protect official languages, but those laws are not being applied.

There is no end to the examples from this government. Just look at the Quebec City marine rescue sub-centre. Today, the government was asked what it intends to do since the Commissioner of Official Languages said that there could be a serious problem for people who end up in trouble on the water. He said that what is in place is inadequate. The government is saying there is no problem.

However, there is a problem when a francophone on a boat has to communicate with an anglophone at a marine rescue sub-centre who knows only two or three words of French. This is unacceptable and against the law, but so it is and so it shall remain unless the government changes its policies. It is imperative that it do so.

It is not good enough to say that we have many laws to protect our two official languages. That may or may not be true. We will see what happens in committee.

I could provide a number of examples of committees where the NDP supported a bill for which the testimony and all the proposed amendments were rejected by the government. The NDP then had to vote against the bill because it was not very good. The government says that the NDP votes against everything, but that is not true. We simply want better.

The consumer confidence impact of the bill is also quite important. Canadian products are known the world over for quality and innovation. We have been on the leading edge of some of the greatest inventions and innovations in history. Yet we have seen a steady moving away from that basic science, which is concerning, both to those in industry and those in science. It is not in every case that scientists sit down in the laboratory and know the product they are going to achieve in the marketplace. That is not the way science often works. There is a litany of examples of things that we now rely upon, such as the computer, the BlackBerry or the automobile that did not start off as inventions. They started off as basic science and understanding. That needs to still be there.

As international trade is so important to Canada as a trading nation, we need to get these international standards aligned properly and make sure that the regulations and standards we design are able to fit yet do not diminish us as a nation. This is important. Everyone should agree that in the pursuit of that trade, we do not diminish ourselves and say that we will accept lower standards for health and safety or for the quality of the products we have. That would be contrary to the aspects of good and fair trade.

In this bill, we have a number of things that are important. Yet it will probably be at the committee stage when we will see the willingness of the government to do what good governments do, which is work with the opposition to make things better. There is no chance, it is just impossible to imagine, that the first incarnation of this bill was written perfectly without a comma or period out of place and without a word that needs to be taken away or added.

The New Democrats will be there to study the bill vigorously at committee and ensure that it is the best piece of legislation possible.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

This bill is obviously very technical. It seems rather difficult to understand and to apply. My colleague alluded to the extent to which the regulations can be applied. Naturally, he talked about the two official languages, in particular their use in rescue operations.

Could my colleague point to other situations that could possibly pose a problem with respect to the regulations and regulatory provisions to be implemented?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of examples that prove that the official languages are not a priority for this government. The Conservatives talk about it, but they take no action.

One question must be raised. Is it possible that the regulations and the standards could be in English and that a Quebec company would have to have them translated? Who would pay for that? These regulations are very technical. The language is not very clear for the uninitiated person who does not know English very well and who wants to decipher the objective. It is also legislation. It is a regulation with some power. Who will pay for that, if required? I do not know.

Does the government intend to work in both official languages when it comes to all the regulations? I do not think so. We have questions. I believe that there is a way to ensure that all francophones in Canada will be winners with this bill. However, we still need answers.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology) (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Mr. Speaker, this is not really a question. It is a comment. The member is absolutely correct that basic research and investigator-driven investigations are very important. Just a couple of days ago, I announced more than $400 million for basic research. What the member might also want to know, and here is some trivia for him, is that the laptop computer was actually invented as a result a government asking scientists to come up with a computer that would actually fit in a briefcase.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that in debating is called a smackdown.

That is an interesting piece of trivia. We have had two now. We had one earlier in my friend's speech, and now we know where the laptop came from. I did not know that.

I have often said that if we left it solely to government to try to invent something like the BlackBerry, just in and of itself, it would be 40 pounds and would work at a distance of 200 feet. It would not be all that great, because the government is not well designed to do that kind of innovation in and of itself. However, it is meant to stir and stimulate that innovation and bring together the best minds. That is a good role for government.

The BlackBerry, perhaps, is no better example. The government invested heavily. The oil sands would be another example. The government invested heavily across the country in developing the technology and in stimulating the type of investment that allowed it to start being profitable and commercially viable.

While innovation in and of itself can come from government, there have been some concerns, and the minister is well aware of them, about too much of a move toward only commercialized science. That is science that, from the moment it starts, is purely designed for that commercial moment. While it sounds pretty good in a press conference, the minister will also know the way science works. Innovators do not know what they are going to get when they start. The best minds are open to those possibilities. We need to attract those best minds. We need to allow them the space to make those mistakes, because that is what science is. It is a series of repeated mistakes until they find the way through and find the inventions and innovations that lead to a better quality of life for everybody.

I thank the member for the tidbit. I did not know that about the laptop.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as a former federal researcher, having worked for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, an academic once told me that the best researcher is somebody who is humble enough to know that he or she does not know everything. I paid attention quite closely to the speech given by my hon. colleague and was surprised at how far the government has gone in refusing to recognize a number of amendments, which has proven that it does not have an open mind, thinks it has the only truth and is arrogant enough to believe that. I find it strange that it is bragging about its openness to science when the a priori of science is to recognize that we do not know anything and that we learn from others and the experimental process.

With regard to this legislation, if we had that perspective, how much could we improve this legislation?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, something I have admitted publicly before, that I got quite wrong in terms of my thinking when the current government moved from a minority to a majority position, was how the tone and tenor of the debate would be and how legislation would be dealt with. I assumed that with a majority and the confidence of being able to pass legislation, that confidence would then lead to a certain amount of willingness to discuss amendments and work on legislation because at no point in a majority government, unless there is a serious crisis, can the government fall.

Minority governments are naturally quite skittish, and that is understood, and there is a lot of parlaying that has to happen between the parties. I have been wrong and disappointed so many times at committee. It is not that we put forward an amendment and the majority members of the government on the committee say it is wrong because of x, they just vote against it. Then they vote against the next one and the next one and the next one, until we have gone through all of the amendments and they are all gone. That is not necessarily the best way to do things and I sometimes search for the reason for that. Why bother? Who cares, if an amendment gets through, who the source was?

In fact, one might argue, strategically, it would better bond and tie the opposition to the legislation being moved through if we made amendments to it. I have seen legislation, as have you, Mr. Speaker, that has moved through the House and when the opposition starts to feel a certain need to vote against it, the government says the opposition got 10 amendments and they changed this, that and the other. Bill C-15, the military justice act, is a good example. There was a long battle and a certain amount of arrogance that was going on until a fundamental amendment was accepted and, lo and behold, look at what happened. We got a better bill, not according to us but the people it is going to affect: the military. That is good, that is better, that is what Parliament is meant to do. There has been too much of this bellicose attitude.

Hope springs eternal, as my friend, the government House leader, said earlier, and the hope is that we find that common ground a little more often, rather than the constant dismissal and arrogance of saying that the answers to the questions we face can only come from one side.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am interested in the area of regulations, that is for sure. I would suggest he read Cass Sunstein's new book because I firmly believe there can be smart regulations that decrease costs to both the industry and the consumer if they are written well.

Getting back to my question, this bill does not change the gazetting process, where there is open consultation with Canadians and people can write in. It really is a legislative tool. I would ask the member to keep an open mind. By having more tools in front of us, by codifying the practice of incorporation by reference, Parliament has more tools at its disposal in order to, at the end of the day, bring forward a better result for Canadians.

I would like him to speak specifically to those things. Is he aware that this does not change that and is he supportive of parliamentarians having more tools at their disposal in a codified way to build what he said earlier, that certainty for business and growth?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the gazetting process has not changed, although some would argue that as the gazetting process is right now, it is not open enough to the public. There are a number of instances where new regulations have been gazetted and the people affected had no idea it had happened at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, dumped in before Easter. There are other concerns I have around the gazetting.

In terms of offering more powers to parliamentarians, I might argue back that there are a number of changes we have seen not just in this legislation but others allowing more and discretionary powers not to the elected officials but to the unelected.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Legislative tools.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There may be legislative tools, as my friend says, but there is not as much in this bill, though certainly others, where the deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers end up with an increased amount of power: the Fisheries Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, and on and on it goes. That is actually straying more toward the anti-democratic nature of things. That is a concern for many of us because the power should rest here. This is the place that is supreme and that is why we are all here to try to get things done.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the official opposition House leader, who I think has proved that a member of Parliament should be able to rise and give a 20-minute speech on anything at any time. He certainly did that well. I know his constituents and mine are seized with this issue and are glad that we are debating it here today. I am thankful that there is some time before the nightly playoff hockey will start so people can watch both this debate and that, later on.

I am pleased to speak about the incorporation by reference in regulations act, Bill S-12. The bill deals with the regulatory drafting technique. Essentially, it is about when federal regulators can or cannot use the technique of incorporation by reference. Bill S-12 has been studied by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and has been reported without amendment to the House for consideration.

The technique of incorporation by reference is currently used in a wide range of federal regulations. Indeed, it is difficult to think of a regulated area in which incorporation by reference is not used to some degree. Bill S-12 is about securing the government's access to a drafting technique that has already become essential to the way government regulates. It is also about leading the way internationally in the modernization of regulations. More particularly, Bill S-12 responds to concerns expressed by the Joint Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations about when incorporation by reference can be used. Incorporation by reference has already become an essential tool that is widely relied upon to achieve the objectives of the government.

The Senate committee considering the bill has heard that it is also an effective way to achieve many of the current goals of the cabinet directive on regulatory management. For example, regulations that use this technique are effective in facilitating intergovernmental co-operation and harmonization, a key objective of the regulatory co-operation council established by the Prime Minister and President Obama. By incorporating the legislation of other jurisdictions with which harmonization is desired or by incorporating standards developed internationally, regulations can minimize duplication, an important objective of the red tape reduction commission, which issued its report earlier this year. The result of Bill S-12 would be that regulators have the option of using this drafting technique in regulations aimed at achieving these objectives.

Incorporation by reference is also an important tool for the government to help Canada comply with its international obligations. Referencing material that is internationally accepted rather than attempting to reproduce the same rules in the regulations also reduces technical differences that create barriers to trade, something that Canada is required to do under the World Trade Organization's technical barriers to trade agreement.

Incorporation by reference is also an effective way to take advantage of the use of the expertise of standards-writing bodies in Canada. Canada has a national standards system that is recognized all over the world. Incorporation of standards, whether developed in Canada or internationally, allows for the best science and the most accepted approach in areas that affect people on a day-to-day basis to be used in regulations. Indeed, reliance on this expertise is essential to ensuring access to technical knowledge across the country and around the world.

Testimony by witnesses from the Standards Council of Canada before the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs made it clear how extensively Canada already relies on international and national standards. Ensuring that regulators continue to have the ability to use ambulatory incorporation by reference in their regulations means that Canadians can be assured that they are protected by the most up-to-date technology. Incorporation by reference allows for the expertise of the Canadian national standards system and the international standards system to form a meaningful part of the regulatory tool box.

Another important aspect of Bill S-12 is that it allows for the incorporation by reference of rates and indices such as the consumer price index or the Bank of Canada rates, important elements in many regulations. For these reasons and more, ambulatory incorporation by reference is an important instrument available to regulators when they are designing their regulatory initiatives.

However, Bill S-12 also strikes an important balance in respect of what may be incorporated by reference by limiting the types of documents that can be incorporated by the regulation-maker. Also, only the versions of such a document as it exists on a particular day can be incorporated when the document is produced by the regulation-maker only. This is an important safeguard against circumvention of the regulatory process.

Parliament's ability to control the delegation of regulation-making powers continues, as does the oversight of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. We expect the standing joint committee will continue its work in respect of the scrutiny of regulations at the time they were first made, as well as in the future. We expect that the standing joint committee will indeed play an important role in ensuring the use of this technique continues to be exercised in the way that Parliament has authorized.

One of the most important aspects of this bill relates to accessibility. The Minister of Justice recognized this in his opening remarks to the Senate standing committee during its consideration of this bill. Bill S-12 would not only recognize the need to provide a solid legal basis for the use of this regulatory drafting technique, but it would also expressly impose in legislation an obligation on all regulators to ensure that the documents they incorporate are accessible.

While this has always been something that the common law required, this bill clearly enshrines this obligation in legislation. There is no doubt that accessibility should be part of this bill. It is essential that documents that are incorporated by reference be accessible to those who are required to comply with them. This is an important and significant step forward in this legislation. The general approach to accessibility found in Bill S-12 will provide flexibility to regulatory bodies to take whatever steps might be necessary to make sure that the diverse types of material from various sources are in fact accessible.

In general, material that is incorporated by reference is already accessible. As a result, in some cases no further action on the part of the regulation-making authority will be necessary. For example, provincial legislation is already generally accessible. Federal regulations that incorporate provincial legislation will undoubtedly allow the regulator to meet the requirement to ensure that the material is accessible.

Sometimes accessing the document through the standard organization itself will be appropriate. It will be clear that the proposed legislation will ensure the regulated community will have access to the incorporated material with a reasonable effort on their part. It is also important to note that standards organizations, such as the Canadian Standards Association, understand the need to provide access to incorporated standards.

By recognizing the changing landscape of the Internet, this bill creates a meaningful obligation on regulators to ensure accessibility while still allowing for innovation, flexibility and creativity. Bill S-12 is intended to solidify the government's access to a regulatory drafting technique that is essential to modern and responsive regulation. It also recognizes the corresponding obligation that regulators must meet when using this tool.

This bill strikes an important balance that reflects the reality of modern regulation while ensuring the appropriate protections are enshrined in law. No person can suffer a penalty or sanction if the relevant material was not accessible to them.

This proposal will provide express legislative authority for the use of this technique in the future and confirm the validity of existing regulations incorporating documents in a manner that is consistent with that authority.

We have many years of successful experience with the use of ambulatory and static incorporation by reference in legislation at the federal level. This knowledge will be useful in providing guidance in the future. There is also every indication that the use of this technique will be essential to implementing regulatory modernization initiatives here in Canada, in conjunction with our regulatory partners in the United States and around the world.

To conclude, enactment of this legislation is the logical and necessary next step to securing access in a responsible manner to incorporation by reference in regulation. I encourage members to support this legislative proposal and recognize the important step forward that it contains.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, and I have for him the same question I asked the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, to which I did not really get an answer.

As the deputy critic for persons with disabilities, I like to look at proposed legislation through a disability lens, and I think the word “accessible” has a different meaning from the one the bill is proposing. On behalf of persons with disabilities, I would like to know whether the government intends the word “accessible” to include accessibility for persons with visual impairments who need Braille copy, persons with hearing impairments, et cetera.

On the face of it, this has a different meaning from just being able to access the legislation or the regulation as an ordinary Canadian. Therefore I would like to know, from the government's perspective, if the word “accessible” is inclusive of persons who have disabilities.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think I can answer that by saying yes and no.

I do not believe that the term “accessible” in this particular bill refers to accessibility in the traditional common-sense definition of being accessible to someone with a disability. That being said, the government, by using incorporation by reference, is still required to meet all of the obligations it is required to meet normally. Therefore, if there is a requirement, if it is commonplace for the government to produce references on a website that is readable by someone with a visual impairment, then that requirement will carry over to this. However, as far as I know, the accessibility in this legislation refers more to the ability of someone to access it generally and not specifically as it relates to a person with a disability.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we have incorporation by reference, and many of those references will be of a third-party nature; for example, international standards. Many of those standards will often be written in just one language, predominantly in English. I wonder if the member could provide comment as to whether or not he foresees that as being somewhat problematic given that Canada is a bilingual nation.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, incorporation by reference does not allow the government to avoid its language obligations. Canada's Constitution requires that acts of Parliament and regulations made under them must be enacted and published in both official languages. It also recognizes that it is constitutionally acceptable to incorporate by reference a document that is not available in an official language if there is a bona fide, legitimate reason to do so.

Documents generated by the government would always be incorporated in both official languages. Therefore, this legislation would not change anything in that regard, and obviously there would be every effort made by the government to have the documents or the reference material available in both official languages. However, in the case where that is not possible, and there is a legitimate reason for it not being possible, this would allow those documents to be referenced as well.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech. He currently serves on the scrutiny of regulations committee, and he is doing a great job there. His presentation tonight was very precise as well.

There has been a lot of discussion on the subject of Bill S-12, particularly on the importance of certainty to business. Obviously, this is a legislative tool that the government and parliamentarians currently use, and this would be codified. However, there are other benefits—for example, helping to harmonize international agreements—and there could be standards that allow Canadian enterprise to grow. Could the member share his thoughts about some of the positive aspects of this bill?

Many members tonight have said that the bill is quite technical. Therefore, if the member could point out some of the benefits that come along with this piece of legislation, I would appreciate it.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate that, and I could not hope to fill the shoes of the hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla when he left the scrutiny of regulations committee. I am just trying to pick up the slack where he left it.

I did want to comment on the hon. opposition House leader's comment that there was no fight to get on the scrutiny of regulations committee. I think the member for Hamilton Mountain, the co-chair of that committee from the New Democratic Party, would take great offence at that. She does a great job as well.

Returning to the member's question, using incorporation by reference in regulation would facilitate harmonization and intergovernmental co-operation. It would reduce barriers to trade. It would allow the government to access leading edge technical expertise from national and international standards writing organizations.

The hon. opposition House leader mentioned a case of an updated health regulation in a bill that he brought forward when he was first elected. If that regulation had been incorporated by reference and been updated, it would have automatically updated the legislation and the regulations so there would not have been a need to go through a legislative change at that point. If there had been a medical advance or there was a new warning system for a certain chemical, that would have automatically become law through this sort of process. That is my understanding. There are definite benefits to the health and safety of Canadians and also to the productivity and commercialization prospects for companies across this country.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon and likewise his colleague from Okanagan—Coquihalla for their leadership on this. I appreciate very much the presentation they have just made.

In terms of business certainty, the official opposition House leader talked earlier about certainty as an important value in this legislation. For Canadians who might be listening in—there must be a couple—if we incorporate by reference and it is a standard that would be amended from time to time, how are we going to know at this time whether that law is in force? In other words, if it is an ambulatory reference to a law that may be changing, that we are going to incorporate by reference into this law, it may have changed a couple of times since our law was drafted—because that is what an ambulatory reference is, dynamic, and ignorance of the law is no excuse in our system—I have to know what law I am complying with. How do I know?

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is going to be the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations that will continue to monitor when these changes come forward. It is important to know as well, as he mentioned, the ambulatory versus the static or the static versus dynamic. There are certain statutes or laws where certainly having an ambulatory reference would not be appropriate. That is clearly laid out here.

The Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations will continue to monitor these sorts of situations with able staff and members of Parliament. It is a unique committee that operates on consensus with the opposition. The member can take great comfort in the fact that his colleagues, along with the government side, will continue to ensure Canadians are protected through regulations, and we would use the incorporation by reference found in Bill S-12 for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening to address this bill. I have never had the honour of sitting on the statutory instruments regulations committee. It sounds as if it might be a very interesting committee. I do find it most fascinating that the government has chosen to use this particular bill, given that we are allocated four or five hours, which is probably more hours of debate than for many other pieces of legislation. However, at the end of the day, it is going to be interesting. I suspect that we might see differing opinions. We in the Liberal Party have a great deal of concern with regard to this bill. We cannot see ourselves supporting it at this time, and we will have to wait and see what happens at committee stage and see if the government is going to be able to address the issues.

We were talking about a different bill, Bill C-475, during private members' business, and it dealt with personal information. A government member stood up and made a comment on how wonderful it would be to have Bill C-12 debated, given that all sides of the House seemed to be supportive of Bill C-12. The member made the suggestion that he would even be prepared to see that bill debated right away. Maybe if the Conservatives recognize the importance of that bill, they might also want to call that; the last time it was brought before the House being back in September 2011. We will have to wait and see.

Another concern that was raised was in the form of questions that I asked both Conservative speakers in regard to the whole issue of the French language. I come from the province of Manitoba, and the French language issue in terms of laws and regulations was a critically important ruling that came from the Supreme Court of Canada. The ruling reflected on many of Manitoba's laws and, because of not having appropriate translation, the court had virtually given Manitoba a time schedule to pass all sorts of other regulations and laws in order to keep them in effect. It gave us a bit of a sunset clause in terms of needing to pass this in order to comply. Otherwise, we would have had a series of laws, whether provincial legislation or regulation, that would have become void. Therefore, we take the issue very seriously in terms of some of the things, and that is the reason I posed the questions.

In looking at Bill S-12, there are a couple of things that are really important to note. Quite often, the intent might be clear. Individuals, whether members of Parliament or those assisting in trying to create legislation or regulation, will be fairly clear on what it is they are trying to accomplish, the actual intent. The real challenge is to try to take that intent that is being expressed and put it into words, and in our case also to ensure that the translation is in essence saying the same thing whether in English or in French. That is a very important point.

As an example, one of the first issues that came up was related to Air Canada. It was an important issue, through which I suspect many individuals who might be listening in on the debate might get a better sense of the importance of converting intent into appropriate words. I recall the Air Canada Public Participation Act that was brought in a number of years ago. There is absolutely no doubt that, if we look at the debates and some of the discussions that took place in the committee, we would find that the intent that was being spoken was that communities like Winnipeg, Mississauga and Montreal would be guaranteed their overhaul maintenance positions.

This literally translated into thousands of jobs in Winnipeg, hundreds of jobs that were in essence guaranteed in that law. That was the intent.

If we read the legislation that is there today, I think most Canadians, in reading it, would come to the same conclusion to which I came. I raised that issue shortly after being elected back in December 2011. When I raised it, it was to challenge the government. It was to tell the Prime Minister that we had a law that said these overhaul maintenance bases were supposed to be guaranteed. Air Canada was legally obligated to maintain those bases.

The Prime Minister and the government responded by saying that this was not necessarily their interpretation. Apparently, the government found a lawyer somewhere who said that this was not the case, that there was no legal obligation.

It did not matter what we attempted, whether it was through postcards or petitions. Many different stakeholders and individuals read the law and said that the law was pretty clear.

I raise that because at the end of the day is it very important. When we think of a regulation or a law, we often talk about what we are hoping to achieve by passing it, but what is written down on that piece of paper and translated is what counts.

As legislators, we have to take that responsibility very seriously. In recognizing what this legislation is doing, it is offloading a great deal of responsibility. I know the record will clearly demonstrate that this has not necessarily been a government that wants to take responsibility. By allowing this legislation to pass as it is, we need to recognize that there will be more laws being put into place with less scrutiny from the House of Commons.

That is one of the effects that the passage of this bill will have. We need to be very clear on that point.

Another profound impact the legislation will have is in regard to the whole idea of incorporation by reference and what will happen in regard to that secondary language, whether it happens to be English or French. We are in a bilingual nation and there is an expectation. I will provide a little more comment on that in a few minutes.

The legislative summary that was provided by the Library of Parliament had some interesting information that is worth expressing. One point deals with the amount of regulation versus laws in terms of numbers of pages. It is interesting to note, and this is a quote from the parliamentary library, “There are, at the federal level alone, approximately 3,000 regulations comprising over 30,000 pages”. Compare that to somewhere in the neighbourhood of 450 statutes, which comprise roughly 13,000 pages.

Furthermore, departments and agencies submit to the regulations section, on average, about 1,000 draft regulations each year, whereas Parliament enacts about 80 bills during the same period. The executive therefore plays a major role in setting the rules of law that apply to Canadian citizens.

What we will find is that the number of laws in comparison to regulations is decreasing as we rely more on regulations. When we go into or finish second reading and then it goes to committee stage, how often do we hear from government representatives or policy analysts who say “this is what the clause says and further explanation will be provided via regulation?” We hear a lot of that.

Why then should we be concerned? We have to be careful that we recognize the importance of laws versus regulations and the incorporation of references into regulations.

We start off with our Constitution and our Charter of Rights. These are things that no one would question. We then go on to laws that would be passed in the House of Commons, then to regulations. Finally, we would go to the incorporation of reference.

Look at each stage and how difficult it is to change the Constitution. We do not see too much public will or interest in changing the Constitution. In terms of legislation, the same principle applies. There is a process of changing legislation. There is first reading, second reading, committee, third reading, the Senate and finally royal assent. There is a great deal of scrutiny that takes place.

What about regulations? There is a legal examination and registration that have to take place. Ultimately, publication takes place in the Canada Gazette.

We can see the difference between them. Each level has a different sense of accountability or process that we have to follow. If we take just the one component, the legal examination, the examination for the passage of legislation will come through here. There are all sorts of responsibilities that all members, particularly critics, caucuses, vested interest groups and stakeholders of a wide variety, have in ensuring there is some form of due diligence and a sense of accountability.

What about the regulation? When it comes to legal examination, we know there is an obligation for the Clerk of the Privy Council. There have been four things that were cited again, dealing specifically with this bill, that came from the Library of Parliament. Those four things in passing or ensuring that there is some form of legal examination of that regulation.

The first is, “(a) it is authorized by the statute pursuant to which it is to be made”. Another way of saying it is that if we want to change or pass a regulation, we want to ensure it is in compliance with the legislation or a current law that has been passed by the House of Commons.

The second is, “(b) it does not constitute an unusual or unexpected use of the authority pursuant to which it is to be made”. That would be something that would obviously make a whole lot of sense. After all, it cannot override a law, like a law cannot override our Constitution.

The third is, “(c) it does not trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms and is not, in any case, inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights”. We are asking that the Clerk of the Privy Council, in consultation with others, ensure that it does not contradict some of those basic rights. Before, if it was a law, it would be something where members, and in particular the Minister of Justice, would play a much stronger role in ensuring the compliance in that regard.

The fourth is, “(d) the form and draftsmanship of the proposed regulations are in accordance with established standards”. This is something where one would expect our legislative counsel and others that assist us to ensure the wording was correct. That is why at the beginning I commented on the importance of wording, that in fact one can be very clear orally what the intent is, but we have to ensure that this intent is put into proper words because it is the wording that is of critical importance.

I would like to quote from the Library of Parliament because I believe it is stated quite well in terms of what specifically, when we think of regulations, is actually at stake in dealing with Bill S-12. I quote directly from the report that has been provided to us from the Library of Parliament. It states:

When Parliament confers a power to make regulations, the regulation-maker usually exercises this power by drafting the text of the regulation to be enacted. The regulation-maker may also decide that the contents of an existing document are what should be used in the regulation it intends to enact. One way to make the contents of such a document part of the text of the regulation would be to reproduce it word for word in the regulation. Alternatively, the regulation-maker can simply refer to the title of the document in the regulation. The contents of the document will then be said to be “incorporated by reference”. The legal effect of incorporation by reference is to write the words of the incorporated document into the regulation just as if it had actually been reproduced word for word. The incorporation by reference of an existing document is no more than a drafting technique, and a regulation-maker need not be granted any specific power in order to resort to this technique. This is referred to as “closed” or “static” incorporation by reference.

We need to be very careful with that. When we talk about international standards, what we are really saying is that incorporation by referencing says that we are going to take a third party standard, whether international, provincial or it does not even have to be a government agency. It could be any sort of a third party and it could be a one paragraph document or it could be a 500-page document.

I see my time has run out. Hopefully there will be a question and I will be able to conclude my comment on that aspect of it.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that my hon. colleague has a lot to say. It is unfortunate that he gets only 10 or 20 minutes to speak in the House. I have a question for him about Bill S-12.

This bill originated in the Senate, a chamber that has recently been the subject of a lot of controversy. My constituents are outraged that senators are not elected or accountable and that some often misuse public funds. This happened with a number of Conservative senators, but also senators from another party.

Could my colleague tell us where his party stands on the Senate? Does he think it should be reformed, or should we abolish this outdated institution?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting question. Let me make it relevant to the bill if I could. I talked about the difference in terms of Constitution versus laws, versus regulations. When we think of a Constitution, it is a whole lot more difficult to change the Constitution. For example, let us say we wanted to change the Senate, whether it is to make it a triple-E Senate that the Reform Party used to talk about, or to abolish the Senate. We would have to get virtually all of the provinces, I think 9 out of 10, to agree. We would have to have a constitutional debate and I do not know if Canadians are open to a constitutional debate.

We could be a little deceptive. We could say that we want to abolish the Senate, but in reality it is not that simple because we would have to change the Constitution. We would have to make sure that Canadians as a whole want to change the Constitution and get a sense of what provinces want in terms of a Senate. We do not want to prejudge what Canadians want and we have to respect what our provincial jurisdictions would want to see.

From the Liberal Party's perspective, we are quite open-minded, but it is going to be Canadians and the provinces that will ultimately have to agree to a constitutional reform in order to deal with that issue.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I was very fascinated at the end of the member's speech, which he did not get a chance to finish, on international regulations and standards. I was wondering if he could finish his thoughts.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comment from my colleague because it is a very important part of this issue. We need to recognize that when we talk about the incorporation of references, we are really saying that we have third-party agencies, international standards, provincial standards, they do not even have to be government agencies. What the government is proposing could take anything from one sentence potentially to a 500-page document. The document ultimately would be changed by a third party and in essence become a law here in Canada that would be applied to all people who call Canada home from coast to coast to coast.

That means we could have an international standard in some foreign country changing a document. We might not even be aware of that change. It could be done in one language. It might not even be in English or French. Yet, potentially, it would have an impact on everyone here in Canada. I do not know if that is what Canadians would want to see happen and that is one of the reasons why we are having a difficult time and will not support the bill going to the committee stage.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great intent to my colleague from Winnipeg North, especially in response to my colleague about the Senate. Perhaps there is an argument to be made for incorporation by reference if we incorporated rules by reference to absolutely abolish the Senate. We could simply incorporate the reference and off it goes. That would probably be the best example if we wanted to incorporate by reference. It would absolutely work.

The majority of polls across this country in the last few months said that close to 70% of Canadians say it is time to roll up the red carpet, wish them all a happy new year or the best of the summer season and send them home to never return. Since my colleague talked about this being a constitutional piece, it is Canadians who are saying enough is enough. I suggest that Canadians across this country from coast to coast to coast who are saying it is time to roll up the red carpet tell their politicians, provinces and territories that it is time for them to get on board and simply say sayonara to the senators. Does he not agree?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP can wish it away all they want. It is not going to disappear until the premiers and the Prime Minister are sitting at the table.

I can tell the member that the leader of the Liberal Party is very much open to listening to what Canadians and the premiers across this land have to say about it, if in fact we want to enter into constitutional discussions. However, what we will not do is mislead Canadians by making it sound as if all we have to do is say we should abolish it and it is gone. In government, there is a responsibility to make sure that the process is gone through.

We have to respect the fact that there are differing provinces possibly with differing opinions, but everything is on the table, from the Liberal Party's perspective. Liberals are not going to be closed-minded on it. Remember that there is only one party, the NDP, that has closed its mind on it. It does not matter what Canadians or other provinces have to say, it just wants to abolish it. If that is what it is going to be, that is what it is going to be at the end of the day, but we have to approach it with an open mind. That is what I would encourage the New Democratic Party to do: join us in supporting the idea of having an open mind in terms of the future of the Senate of Canada.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in reference to my colleague and his opposition, apparently, to this bill, I would like to ask the following question.

The member for Okanagan—Coquihalla and the House leader for the New Democratic Party both talked about business certainty and the importance in our trading nation to have rules that we can adopt from other jurisdictions because it is more efficient, businesses advise, to go to Europe, the United States or other parts of the world—shipping was used as an example—to incorporate their rules rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time in Canada. Does that argument about business efficiency not attract support from the member as a consequence?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, I do not think the Liberal Party has to take any lessons in international trade from the Conservative government or the NDP opposition. All we need to do is look at the Liberal years in government. There were huge trade surpluses. In fact, in the last year of the Liberal government, there were billions of dollars in trade surplus. There consistently were trade surpluses. It is only today through the current Conservative government that we have seen trade deficits, which have been very damaging in terms of the economic performance of Canada. We could and should be doing a lot more.

Yes, changes to regulations can be a good thing in many different ways if they are done properly, but I would not necessarily make the member's point, given that the government has turned a huge trade surplus into a huge trade deficit, as the one that is going to resolve it, especially if he believes the only way to resolve it is to change regulations. It is going to take a lot more of an effort to make back the gains that have been lost by the government.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate on Bill S-12, from that other place.

It is interesting, and it needs to be said, that the bill is here because the Senate, of course, has the power to generate bills itself. A lot of people are looking at the scandal that is going on right now and are thinking that we have to get rid of all of that so we can go back to the way we were when the Senate did not really get involved in things. However, the reality is that for any bill, this one or any other, to become law, it has to pass this place and it also has to pass through that place.

Given there are fewer seats in that place than there are in this place, the relative weight of a vote is worth more in the unelected, unaccountable Senate than it is in the elected, accountable House of Commons. Therefore, this is serious. The crisis is not just the scandal, it is the state of our democracy where we give equal if not greater authority under our Constitution to a body that has no moral, ethical or democratic legitimacy. That needs to be said every time we are dealing with the Senate of Canada.

It is not just the horrific headlines and scandals that we are seeing. It is the scandal that unelected people can vote on our laws, have to vote on our laws, and their weight is worth more than those of us on both sides of the House who are going to have to go back to our constituents and knock on doors to say, “I'm here to be accountable”. We will never hear a senator say, “I'm here to be accountable”. However, we have to live where we are now,

I recognize that my colleague for Winnipeg North took a different approach. It would have been nice to hear him say that he wished the Senate was abolished too so at least we would all be on the same starting page rather than just finding a nice way to avoid taking a position. Yes, the NDP is the only party that has taken a clear position to abolish the Senate. Of course, it is easier for us because we do not have the baggage of appointed senators leaning on our shoulders and whispering in our ears “don't hurt me”.

Our position remains clear. I think a growing number of Canadians are beginning to believe and understand that, as not a single province has a Senate left, we do not have to have a Senate. It is a choice of whether we want one or not. For 35 million people, give or take, there is a good argument that we do not need to duplicate the House of Commons.

When I was at Queen's Park in the legislative assembly, if there was a mistake made, just like when I was on city council, we brought in another bill to correct the mistake. It happens. The Senate is no guarantee that there are no mistakes or we would have a perfect country.

However, we are dealing with this bill now, which is actually very detailed and complex in terms of some of the references, especially for those of us who are not lawyers. We are all lawmakers, but we are not all lawyers, and we do not need to be.

One of the most important things that happens at the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations is that there are elected people as well as very professional well-trained staff there to give advice, and so one does not have to be a lawyer. Sometimes, every now and then we get lawyers, and because they are lawyers, they then believe that their opinion, of course, is as good as any other lawyer and they engage in that debate. Whereas us mere mortals who are not lawyers will want to hear all the legal arguments as we do not have a vested interest in the outcome other than the best law that we can have. Having said that, there is certainly nothing strange about having lawyers become lawmakers, but a good mix is best.

My other experience with regulations is in two areas.

First, as a former provincial minister, I dealt with regulations. In the briefings with the legal department and policy people, I dealt with the essence of what was there. One does not debate as a minister, unless one is a lawyer. I certainly did not engage in a debate about what language should be in the bill when it came to a technical term, especially for a legal process. However, I would always pay attention if there were other learned people who felt differently, because it is my judgment my constituents elected me to bring here, not my skills as someone who necessarily can sit down with a blank piece of paper and write a law.

The other experience I had is that I am one of those lucky MPs in this place who was not only able to sit on the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations but was a vice-chair. Yes, people do not hear me reference it a lot. There is not much I can pull from that experience in speeches. I think that is the first time in 10 years I have been able to use it.

It was a fascinating committee. Again, if someone is a lawyer who is excited by lawyer things, the more that person will be excited at these meetings. It is great to see the professionalism when people care that much about where a comma goes or whether something should be a subclause of this or that. It is great, because it shows a part of law-making that Canadians do not see when they turn on the TV. Yet it is crucial, particularly when there is an opportunity to travel to other countries that are not as strong as we are economically or democratically. Believe me, many of them would give their right arms to have a committee anything like this so that the kind of detail they want in their law-making and regulations is there. They envy us. I did not always feel that I was in an enviable position when I was sitting on the committee, but when we look at it in a bigger context, we are indeed very fortunate.

As my other colleagues have mentioned, much of its work is to ensure, from a legal point of view, that the English and French texts say the same thing. All of us here, unilingual or bilingual, know that there can be huge differences in meaning with just one or two words or a phrase. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how amplified that is when we are talking about legal documents such as regulations.

Of course, in recent times, we have had other languages brought into play because of the issue of incorporation by reference. There are languages other than French and English that will find a way into our laws. There needs to be translation. It is hard to believe that there would not be some confusion and problems going from another language to French and English such as we have going from French to English and back and forth. Therefore, there are some serious issues here to be dealt with.

There were matters that came before that committee that were decades old in their lack of resolution. Mr. Speaker, I see you nodding your head. I assume that you have been on the committee. You know that sometimes there will be an issue that in 10 years has not been resolved. However, by the end of the meeting, the committee will have dealt with something that is 22 years old. It is amazing. From a practical point of view, we wonder how on earth it could be so important that we are still dealing with it but not so important that it had to be resolved 22 years ago. That is part of the excitement for those who are in the law. I see the Speaker, who is a lawyer, smiling but shaking his head no, so I am not sure what trouble I am in. I will plough ahead nonetheless.

The work is not exactly headline-making, but it really is important. I will go so far as to say that since we have to live with that other place, it allows us the ability, through a joint committee, to bring out any synergies that are there. That deserves to be said.

There is one more thing I want to mention before I get to the specifics of the bill. There is another area where regulations, in my opinion, should be on the radar of most Canadians in terms of understanding how this place works and how laws are really made.

I watched for many years how former Ontario premier Mike Harris would take many things that were already in legislation.

As members know, legislation can only be amended by Parliament. Regulations, on the other hand, do not require Parliament. That is at the core of what we are dealing with here. It is these automatic changes that come from referencing other agreements outside of Canada, such as international agreements or national agreements from other countries, where there is a reference in our regulations. As they make changes, those changes come in and are automatically updated. At least that is my understanding of one of the key issues in Bill S-12.

What we went through in Ontario is worth mentioning, because it was very scary. Many times, but not every time, when that Conservative government was amending legislation, it would often take things out of the legislation and put them in the regulations.

For instance, if there is a law that says that the Government of Ontario, or any province, has the right to set speed limits on highways, those speed limits will be set by regulation so that the law itself does not list every single highway in the province. The government would not have to go back and make a legislative change, with first reading, second reading, third reading, and in this case, all the way over to the Senate. In Queen's Park we did not have that problem. We dealt with it, as elected people, ourselves.

The regulations would then go to cabinet. They could modify or set a speed limit on a highway. That is how legislation and regulations are used in a healthy, democratic way. The principles are set out, and then on some of the details that are going to be different all over, regulations deal with them. There is still a procedure. It still involves the cabinet and the government, but it is a lot quicker and the whole House is not tied up changing one area of Highway 401 to lower the speed limit by 10 kilometres per hour. That makes sense.

However, and I am using this hypothetically, the government would then state that all laws pertaining to the highway that are under the constitutional jurisdiction of the province shall be dealt with by regulation. That sounds like a small change, but it is huge. It goes from having the right to change speeds without debate and to inform cabinet afterwards to doing anything on those highways, as long as there is constitutional jurisdiction. It never has to come to the House. That is not healthy. That is not a strong democracy.

Again, we are into areas here that sound very dry, but they matter. It is our job, of course, as the elected people, to roll up our sleeves and do this work.

We in the official opposition are comfortable enough with some of the goals set out to allow this to go to committee. However, at committee, there needs to be a great deal more scrutiny of this bill. We are hoping that this is exactly what will happen.

If I might, I would just mention this quote. It can never be said enough. It comes from the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. They dealt with this issue in 2007.

Of course, incorporation by reference also gives rise to concerns relating to accessibility to the law, in that although incorporated material becomes part of the regulations, the actual text of that material must be found elsewhere. Such concerns are heightened where material is incorporated “as amended from time to time”, in that members of the public may have difficulty ascertaining precisely what the current version is at a particular point in time. Where open incorporation by reference is to be permitted, provisions should also be put in place to require the regulation-maker to ensure that the current version of an incorporated document is readily available to the public, as are all previous versions that were previously incorporated.

I believe it was a colleague from my caucus who made this point. Given the fact there are going to be these changes to other pieces of legislation, how would one who looks at the regulations know that they are not in the midst of being changed? How much guarantee would they have that the language they are looking at is the law that would be applied to them? In Canada, ignorance of the law is no defence.

Again, this is not something I likely would have thought of, because I would not necessarily, as a rule, be the one to research the original documentation. If we were at committee, there would be staff doing it. Even if we were in our offices, we would ask our staff if we needed that level of detail. It is also not something I would raise as an issue, because I do not use it every day in this way.

Once it is spelled out and brought to the attention of any reasonable Canadian, we would understand that this committee not only had members of the government and opposition but had members from both places. I am assuming that it was unanimous and was supported by the entire committee. That is an assumption on my part. It had to matter, otherwise the politics of the day would have kicked in and there would not have been agreement.

I will tell members that there are a lot of very professional staff there. It is amazing to see the calibre of people who are in the room at these meetings. It is truly impressive. We are all very fortunate to have public servants with this capacity. It is obviously the staff who are usually the ones to recommend this kind of language. This matters. This matters from a practical point of view, which is what I can apply from my experience as a law-maker. What I am hearing loud and clear from people who understand this from a legal point of view and from a detailed policy point of view is that this matters.

I heard some reference to international business investment. Contrary to what the government likes to pretend, we care about those things. I believe that everyone in this House does, because it means jobs for our citizens, our constituents. These things need to be looked at.

We cannot really go into that level of detail here in the House. That is why we have a committee system.

Our position today as the official opposition is that we are prepared to give enough support to send it to committee. However, we will reserve judgment on that point, because we never know how it is going to go.

I would wrap up by saying that this is one of those times when things that seem not to be important, because they do not make headlines, really are. I am hopeful that we will see it sent to committee so that the kind of work that needs to be done on this important bill can be done and it can be brought back here for our final debate and determination as to whether we want to make it a law.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things the hon. member brought up was the fact that this particular bill does not seem to draw a lot of attention nor, most likely, will it reach a lot of headlines.

On that note, the scrutiny of regulations committee, with both senators and members on it, operates on a consensus basis, meaning that when an issue comes forward, the chair will ask what path we should take, and it goes around the room until we find something on which everyone can agree. Votes rarely happen in that committee.

The reason I raise this is that the concerns expressed around incorporation by reference, which is being used and has been used by the government and by Parliament in a number of different bills, have made some very useful suggestions in how to use incorporation by reference in a more codified way that ensures Parliament is properly consulted in legislation. This has come from a concern from a group of Parliamentarians. It is based on a consensus that this needs to be looked at. The government has codified it through a bill.

The reason I raise all this is that I would like the member to, first, acknowledge that this is good legislation, non-partisan legislation. Second to that, I would like him to explain what exact concerns he has, beyond just saying “We are not sure if this should go; we will send it to committee”. This is obviously not a partisan bill, but a good bill to help Parliament do its work.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla for the question and I particularly thank him for the tone. Often we get into evening debates and things can get a little bit sharp-edged around here and elbows could come up. I appreciate the tone and I appreciate the question.

I would first say to the hon. member that, when members are on the government side, they always suggest everything is non-partisan, and they often see it that way, but when members are on the opposition benches, they are not as quick to say it is non-partisan so it could only be good. I just offer up that different perspective.

I would also mention to him that the co-chair of the current committee, my colleague from Hamilton Mountain, of whom I am very proud, said in relation to the bill:

The Conservatives have used ambulatory incorporation by reference—

which goes along with the static and the reference to legal terms

—170 times since 2006. Bill S-12 is essentially designed to give the government legal cover after the fact for its prior and ongoing illegal activities. Put differently and more specifically, proposed section 18.7 would retroactively validate a large number of provisions that were made without lawful authority.

It seems to me, if nothing else, a question like this coming from one of the co-chairs deserves to be answered.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to speak to this issue, and I was very glad that my colleague gave us a full exposition on the oversight committee on regulations.

Forgive me; I need someone to field me with some details on this committee. The committee has the ability to modify regulations or simply just return them to the government.

In the case of the bill, with the type of opportunity the government has to take regulations from other sources it does not control, would it not be that this committee would be sideswiped by this process in many cases, where the regulations that may be in place would be changed without that oversight occurring by the committee? Therefore that committee, which is an institution of this Parliament of which the members talk so highly, would lose some of its ability to ensure the regulations.

As he has told us, these regulations go back and forth very many times, and very bright and capable individuals are giving them a very deep and sincere scrutiny. Is it the case that we will have regulations now that will not be accorded the same respect by this Parliament, by the government, and in that case, are we losing something in the process we have?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is not an easy question, I must say.

I think the question itself provides the answer. The fact is that I cannot answer the questions the hon. member is posing. What is the impact on the ability of our joint committee to continue to function in its current format and procedures? I do not know.

I do know that my colleague, who is the co-chair of the committee and who the hon. members across the way were complimenting in terms of the work that she does, has raised serious questions about what will happen to the issue of giving forgiveness to all these changes that have happened before.

I do not know the answer to that question, but I think that is exactly why we want to send it to committee and why we are saying we need to hear what happens at committee. We need to get the experts in to answer that very kind of question. I guarantee that the answers they give are going to pose a whole lot of other questions that need to be followed up and answered. We will need to do it so that the committee of the whole is satisfactorily comfortable that the scenario my hon. colleague is painting, where our current process is corrupting—and I use the word advisedly, although it is a bad word to use in the current climate—or not working, is failing us in terms of how well it worked before.

These are all very valid questions. I wish I could answer the hon. member, but I cannot. I do not believe that all of the members on the committee can, but they do know enough about what is going on to pose questions like the ones the member for Western Arctic is raising, along with many other questions. That is why we feel it needs to go to committee.

Roll up the sleeves, look at it in detail and hopefully bring a bill back here, in which the questions are answered and we can feel comfortable to move ahead.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, without regulations, a law is worth about as much as yesterday's newspaper.

It takes a lot of brain power and many of our best public servants to draft coherent regulations that will pass legal and other tests.

When the government starts taking resources away from its departments, would it not be tempted to look for shortcuts? For example, it may be tempted to borrow existing regulations from neighbouring or foreign jurisdictions, private interest groups or associations.

One day we could have ocean carriers providing regulations for naval safety. What does my colleague think about that?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting question, similar to the one from the member for Western Arctic.

I do not know the answer to the questions. That is why it needs to go to committee. They are very good questions.

I do not think we need to be lawyers to understand what is in front of us here. These are laws, Canadian regulations, which have the effect of law, that automatically get changed by virtue of another document generating another law, generated in another country or from a multilateral agreement. Changes within that agreement automatically make changes in our regulations.

I guarantee that if we put that kind of scenario in front of Canadians, they will tell us to make sure we know what we are doing and to make sure there are not laws being changed that are harmful to us or create huge mistakes. They will tell us to make sure we do our homework, answer those questions and give them good, regulatory law.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak tonight in support of Bill S-12, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act and to make consequential amendments to the statutory instruments regulations. New Democrats are supporting this bill at this stage, so it can go to committee to be clarified and big questions that are being asked can be answered.

I sometimes think that, in this Ottawa bubble, we use language and terms and put stuff out there, thinking the public is going to be able to understand what is being debated in the House of Common tonight and what MPs from across this country are here discussing at 8:45 p.m. until midnight. Being an English teacher, I always want to see something in the title that will give me a clue or some kind of a lead. If I were not here but sitting in my living room, I would be wondering what on earth members of Parliament are discussing tonight. That, to me, is a huge issue.

We talk about participatory democracy. We televise the glorious debates that go on in this most august House, and we know there are people across this country, who might only be my mother, the member's grandmother and somebody else's daughter, who are sitting at home glued to the TV set watching this. There are Canadians who care and watch CPAC. They watch because they really are engaged in the subjects we are discussing. I think we do them a disservice at times with the language we use and present. I worry about that at times, but I am sure we will talk about that at length.

As members have said previously, we are really talking about changes to either static or ambulatory—are those not wonderful words; one could write poetry with them—regulations that are buried in legislation that can be changed as a result of other laws or regulations being changed without ever coming to the House. That should give us a little concern, and I hope it does.

There are some facts and figures that were quite shocking even to me after being here for two years. This is a quote from the Justice Canada Federal Regulations Manual, 1998, page 3, in case any of you need bedtime reading. I am sure it will be great. This is what it states:

There are, at the federal level alone, approximately 3,000 regulations comprising over 30,000 pages, compared with some 450 statutes comprising about 13,000 pages. Furthermore, departments and agencies submit to the Regulations Section on average about 1,000 draft regulations each year, whereas Parliament enacts about 80 bills during the same period. The executive thus plays a major role in setting rules of law that apply to Canadian citizens.

Therein lies the rub.

As much as we are sending this bill on to the committee stage, when do the stark numbers really strike home? Whereas Parliament deals with 80 bills in a year—though we might be able to do more if going until midnight might be the new norm going into the fall as well, especially with all the time allocation and closure motions—when 1,000 regulatory changes are made or draft regulations presented, one really begins to worry about the state of our democracy.

What happens when changes are made by regulation, it invests so much power in the hands of the executive, in the hands of ministers and those regulatory changes sidestep parliamentary oversight and parliamentary debate, debate here, going to committee, being fine-tuned, coming back here and debated again. As parliamentarians that really should give us pause to stop and think about what our role is as parliamentarians.

There are some things that do make sense to be in regulation. For example, we would not want to spend weeks, months and years in here discussing what the interest rates should be at the Bank of Canada. That is sort of like an ambulatory regulatory change. Quite honestly I would not want to spend months and years discussing that.

However, on the other hand, there are regulatory changes that are made that I would want to discuss in the House because they could affect how Canadians live and work, how they retire and how they spend their leisure time. Therefore, we cannot think that this is just a technical document, that it is a housekeeping bill, purely technical. When we think of how it will be applied in the future and how many regulations are introduced each year and then get changed, sometimes at ministerial whim, we really have to worry. As the previous speaker said, there were lots of questions he was asked and he said “I just don't know the answer”. Reading the legislation, those things are not very clear at all.

As I was going through the legislation, it made me stop and think that sometimes what we consider as just a technical change, a little housekeeping, actually ends up impacting people's daily lives. I can remember from another life, when I was a teacher, when a provincial government decided it was going to do some housekeeping, get rid of a lot of the red tape around the identification and designation of students with special needs. What happened with that? Overnight after the regulatory changes were made and the red tape was gone, children who had very specific and legitimate diagnosed learning needs on a Friday, by the following Monday, they no longer had those needs. It gave the government reason not to fund them.

Even though at the time in British Columbia, many people welcomed getting rid of the red tape and a lot of stuff that surrounded this, but people did not realize that removing a word here, or a phrase there, was going to have such an impact on families of students with special needs.

Therefore, we have to be very careful. I know we are talking about international and national agreements and all of these regulations that change in other places, but one of these days what if there is a government that makes some changes and that automatically forces embedded changes right here that impact us and our everyday lives. I think we would be very concerned.

The other thing we are very concerned about is that we are a bilingual nation. It is embedded in our Constitution and yet we know a lot of these regulations are not available to the public in a bilingual manner, so we want to ensure they are there.

Let me step back a moment for I have misspoke.

What I am looking for in this document is an explicit guarantee that when these regulations are embedded, static, ambulatory, I do not care what the name is, they are there in both official languages. We want to ensure we have that. We also want to strengthen this document in ways that ensure there would not be that kind of view.

It is always good to look at accountability and specificity. We live in this electronic age or age of technology, as it is also called. I am not as familiar with the full range of technology, but I do know that today my children, grandchildren and the young people I know, as well as many young-at-heart retirees, spend much of their time on the computer and want that kind of access. They want to access the regulations, to read them, understand them and know their history. However, at the age of 19, I was quite happy to know none of what was in the backroom.

When my children or grandchildren do research now, and it is amazing to watch the twins, who are in grade eight, they go much deeper with it because everything is available to them on their computer. They ask the kind of questions I would not have asked at their age. Therefore, we have to ensure we make available to the public not just the change that has been made, but what it was like before and what the impact of that change would be. I do have some reservations that none of that will be discussed, and that should be concerning for all of us.

I hear a lot about accountability and transparency. We need all of that. This document came from a place that is not so popular for many these days. I know it has gone through some scrutiny and some changes have been made. However, we are supporting it so it can go to a parliamentary committee where it can receive microscopic scrutiny and where we also hope our colleagues across the aisle will not behave as they have at other committees I have attended. We have taken amendments that ministers have suggested and we thought we have had agreement on and suddenly they are not there. We hope that when they go to committee and our official opposition amendments are brought to that committee, that they will be considered on their merit and not rejected because they come from the official opposition.

A couple of my colleagues look aghast, as if that never happens. I can assure them that I have sat at committee and have seen that happen over and over again, even where we have had committee members say that it is a good amendment or have had ministers say that they know we have some concerns and that they will be quite happy to put this line in. Then when we put the criteria they have suggested in word for word it is suddenly opposed. It leaves us second-guessing what the real agenda is. We do worry about that as well.

There are quite a few issues I could bring up with respect to accountability and the ability to work together.

I have a great deal of concern around regulations. I was absolutely shocked as a member of Parliament at how much substantive change could be made to the laws of this land through changes to regulations. We have seen a huge transformation in the area of immigration that has impacted people. A lot of that work and a lot of those changes were never debated at a parliamentary committee. Nor did they come to this august body, the House of Commons, to be debated. These changes appeared on a website through a press conference. A minister can make all of these changes

At the same time as I support this legislation, I also have a deeply held concern over the subversion of democracy as more and more power is vested into the hands of ministers and the executive branch. I am not trying to take any shots at my colleagues in government, because I believe a lot of this was started by the party that sits in that corner right now, especially when I look at immigration.

Just take a look at what happened the Friday before we went back to our ridings for home week. On Friday afternoon, we received massive changes to family reunification. I sit as a vice-chair of the immigration committee, but we did not receive the changes there. I come to Parliament on a regular basis, but the changes were not discussed here. The changes were made in an announcement that was absolutely floundering. I have talked with people in communities who are just reeling from the changes, and they are so fundamental that they have put into question our commitment toward community-building and our commitments toward families. Yet all of those changes happened without any debate in the House.

The income requirement has been increased by 30% before somebody can sponsor his or her parent to move to Canada. Yet many people in the House and across the country have enjoyed the benefits of family reunification over the years. We all talk about the value of family.

Then we look at this. One in five Canadians is born outside of Canada.

We have introduced a lottery system for family reunification. We have told Canadians right across this great country that no matter where they come from, only 5,000 applications will be taken each year. I never looked at it until I was talking with a group in my riding and somebody said that it was like the lottery, that individuals would have to wait many years even to get in line to come into the country. By the way, when people apply, it is not a guarantee, that is when they can join the line. What have we done there?

I could go on at length about other things that have happened in this parliamentary democracy that shut down debate. We have seen them happen. There have been closures and time allocations. I hear rhetoric that this is all about accountability, that this is just about cleaning up things. Forgive me for thinking that we have suddenly moved to a new phase of parliamentary debate in the House.

As I said, we support this legislation going to committee. We hope the regulations will have the kind of transparency and the kind of language that the average person will comprehend.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate a fellow British Columbian talking about something that is very important to her nad supporting the bill. I am very happy to hear that the NDP is supportive of it in broad strokes and I am sure the committee will go through it.

I just want to reassure the member that the Government of Canada has very strict provisions for introducing all federal regulations in both English and French. That is backed up by case law. I can reassure her on that front.

The other part she talked about was delegated authority, and I think she misunderstands what that is. A delegated authority is created when Parliament says that the Governor in Council shall be able to make changes from time to time. That authority is delegated to that body in order to make timely changes. That again is why regulations are presented from time to time, and they go through a full gazetting process, which is again open to public consultation. There is also the scrutiny of regulations committee, which allows parliamentary oversight. There are many different mechanisms for the hon. member to make her views known if a particular regulation does not match up with a statute in law.

The hon. member spoke about how important it is for amendments to be open and for those to be presented. Can she name one specific amendment to the bill that she thinks would make it better?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand all about delegated authority. It is the delegation of authority over a huge number of issues in this Parliament that I am having a considerable amount of difficulty with.

I am not saying that the delegation of authority started now; it got started earlier into areas that I would say are pretty substantive and that should be debated in the House.

I cited just one case, but I can think of many others as well. However, I do not think the hon. member wants to stay here all night listening to the litany of examples I could give. He is only staying till midnight, and not beyond that, from what I have heard.

The other thing I want to say is that there has to be a role for Parliament. I can see the need for limited regulatory delegation, but I find the way the government uses delegated authority interferes with parliamentary democracy.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has been very clear that it supports the bill. I am wondering if there are any areas in which the member feels that if there are no changes made it would be safe to assume that New Democrats will continue to support the bill, or do they have tangible amendments that they will be proposing to the bill? If they do, can she share with us what those amendments are?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first, we are not at committee stage yet. If the bill should pass second reading, then we will come up with amendments, take those amendments to committee and debate them vigorously.

We have been very clear that we are only supporting the bill to committee stage. Once it gets to committee stage, depending on what happens there, we will have to decide whether we support it beyond that. It would be very foolish of us to say we are going to support it no matter what happens through the rest of the legislative process. I would never recommend that to anyone, by the way.

We are going to go there, do our homework and advocate to try to make things better for Canadians and to provide them with as much protection as we can from the government, and then we will make a decision about the future.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member on her speech. It was an excellent speech. I want to commend her in particular for the way she has been answering the questions put by both the Conservatives and her Liberal colleagues.

My question for the member is about the fact that we are sitting in a House facing a government whose members constantly say their government is all about law and order. If the Conservatives are serious about their law and order agenda, and if ignorance of the law is no excuse, then the law has to be accessible to Canadians.

One of the things I am profoundly worried about when I look at incorporation by open reference is that Canadians will not have access to the law. In some instances, if the regulation is done by a private corporation, Canadians may even have to pay to get access to those regulations. How can we ask Canadians to be responsible under our laws and regulations if we do not give them access to those laws?

Can the member comment as to whether she is equally concerned? Does she not think there is a bit of hypocrisy here when this kind of bill comes forward from a law and order government?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when I first looked at this legislation, in light of what I have seen happen in the area of immigration with the use of regulation and pronouncements from the minister, my first gut reaction was “no way”. No way, José. I was not going to go there.

Then when I began to think a bit, I thought that for some very specific and very tightly controlled areas it might make sense, but it would have to be very tightly controlled.

However, we have a government whose members on the one hand talk about law and order and on the other hand want Canadians just to trust them. This legislation is not very clear about the kind of transparency and about the kind of information that would be available to Canadians when they look at the regulations. Would they have access to the original documents? Would they be able to work their way through the history of it all, and would the information be there in bilingual form?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, can the hon. member for Newton—North Delta explain for me, because I cannot figure it out, what has changed since 2009, when this Parliament and the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations recommended against these broad and flexible ways of short-circuiting public scrutiny and access to review of the regulatory process?

At that time the members of the joint committee said, “What this really means is that it allows rules to be imposed without having to go through the regulatory process”.

This is part and parcel of a number of changes we have seen happening, including in Bill C-60, where there would be intervention at the political level over collective bargaining by crown corporations or through more discretionary powers at the hands of ministers. Slowly but surely, the executive in this country—the Prime Minister's Office, which is subservient to the will of Parliament—will have all the levers of power it needs to rule, with Parliament merely an anachronism.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is the reason we are prepared to go to committee: to ask those tough questions and get the kind of clarification and put checks and balances in place so that government does not ram through a bill just because it has a majority, which the Conservatives will probably do anyway.

However, I believe it is our responsibility to go there, get the clarification for ourselves and try to limit the power of the executive so the Conservatives do not keep expanding that power.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, l want to thank my other colleagues for having raised the level of debate on the bill before us.

When I was asked to speak on the bill earlier today, it looked like one of those dry and incomprehensible things that would be very difficult to get one's teeth into. However, upon reading it, I discovered there is actually a huge change being proposed in the powers of Parliament and the ability of Parliament to do its job, which is to make laws that affect the lives of Canadians. It is such a huge change because the bill proposes to make legal what the government has apparently already done 170 times since it has been in office without some check and balance on that ability.

The bill proposes to make legal the ability of the Governor in Council, which is the 60 men and women who make up the Privy Council, I suppose, to make regulations that are open-ended, to make regulations that are determined by third parties and to make regulations that are actually put in place by some other agency, maybe even a foreign government.

That is huge. It is very difficult for me, as a parliamentarian, to accept.

That said, there may in fact be rare occasions when it is appropriate to incorporate by reference a regulation that is created by an agency that everybody understands, trusts and accepts as the agency that is the world's leading expert on X, Y or Z. With that in mind, the NDP is determined that the bill go off to committee to see if we can whittle down this power to something that is acceptable.

I will read the summary of the bill, which is:

This enactment amends the Statutory Instruments Act to provide for the express power

—a power the government has actually already taken—

to incorporate by reference in regulations. It imposes an obligation on regulation-making authorities to ensure that a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference is accessible. It also provides that a person is not liable to be found guilty of an offence or subjected to an administrative sanction for a contravention relating to a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met. Finally, it makes consequential amendments to the Statutory Instruments Regulations.

On the issue of accessibility, it says “unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met”, and those are not defined. Is that going to be a regulation to the Statutory Instruments Regulations? I ask because the definition of “accessibility” is not here.

I could not get a straight answer from any of the Conservatives I was able to ask questions of as to what exactly “accessibility” means in the context of the bill. It is not provided by the bill itself, yet the summary suggests that there are certain requirements in relation to accessibility. However, they are just not here. Does that mean we are regulating the regulations? It is very confusing.

The bill would put extreme amounts of power into the hands of the executive. As we have already experienced in this House, there have been complaints by certain members of the government party about too much power being in the hands of the executive. Those complaints led to a series of interventions before the Speaker of the House to ask that the Speaker actually rule to limit the power of the executive in controlling its ability to speak in this chamber. I would think that those same members of Parliament would be concerned that the bill before us would put even more power into the hands of the executive without any checks or balances or any way for the Parliament of Canada to determine in advance whether or not it is appropriate to incorporate by reference, which is what the bill suggests we should give the executive the power to do.

There is a Latin phrase, delegatus non potest delegare, which means that a delegate cannot give his power to another delegate. One cannot transfer one's ability to somebody else and say, “Here, you do it for me.”

That is essentially what this bill is suggesting should happen to the laws of this land, that we will make the law, as Parliament, but we will let somebody else determine how that law is actually written. That kind of rubs the wrong way. That is not something that I signed on for, to give somebody else the power to make the laws that we have been sent here to make.

I understand there is a majority position in the House, and so I do not get a whole lot of say. The government rejects any say we try to have in legislation 99.3% of the time, but at least we have that opportunity. This would actually give that power to a third party, to someone outside of this chamber, to change the laws of Canada. The government has already done it on 170 occasions, but until now it has been on a case-by-case basis. This act would actually make it legitimate every time. I have some difficulty with that.

Other legislatures have looked at this problem and come up with rules around how this delegation of authority should be used. Perhaps that is something we should be talking about in committee, because we are not going to have any amendments here. Maybe there are places and times when delegating a regulation is an appropriate thing, but we need to know when those times are and what those regulations would be.

I would suggest, as was suggested by some other legislatures on this planet, that one of the things would be only if it is impractical to do otherwise than to transfer that authority. It should be expressly authorized. It should be clearly quantified. The rules regarding subsequent amendment to that regulation should be clearly stated, so that we cannot just have some third party deciding how to change those regulations.

There should be consultation before those regulations are incorporated. There should be access, and we have talked about access. There ought to be accountability in the hands of the minister. If a minister is going to actually delegate his or her authority to a third party, that minister then has to be accountable for whatever that third party does.

None of that is spelled out in this bill. I worry, too, that we open the door to creating regulations that are in another jurisdiction, in another country, in another part of the planet. As an example, we have privacy regulations in this country that determine that our personal information should be kept private, should be kept in a way that is not disclosed to third parties. However, as we have discovered over the past few years, many of our banking institutions, our utility companies and our telephone companies routinely put that information in other countries.

Does that mean that the government could then legitimize that practice by making those other countries' privacy laws apply to those transactions? That would bother me. I would not want to have that happen. I do not want some other country determining the privacy of my personal information. It then encourages the harmonization of our laws with other perhaps less democratic jurisdictions or perhaps less forward-thinking jurisdictions or perhaps less effective jurisdictions. I do not want to encourage the government to get lazy.

On the issue of accessibility, I have asked the question several times, “Is this accessible in terms that a person with a disability would understand?” I have not gotten a clear answer from the government.

It appears that the word “accessible” is just the word “accessible”. There is no definition of what accessible means anywhere in this act. There is no definition of what is not accessible. It just says it must be accessible. Does that mean that if I have $250 to get a copy of the regulation, I have to pay $250 to get a copy of the regulation from some third party, if that is what that third party wants to charge? Does that mean it is then therefore accessible, because somebody with money can get it?

That is not what our normal level of accessibility is. Accessibility means that all of our laws are published in such a way that libraries across the country have them, and all of the regulations are available to anybody in this country who can walk into a library and get them for free.

Does the word “accessible” mean that we can have costs now for the regulations that are part of the laws that govern this country and, therefore, if a person does not have the money it is no excuse?

The other concern I have, and some my colleagues have already mentioned it, is the origin of this legislation. It is ironic that we are discussing a Senate originating bill when we are in the midst of quite an all-consuming controversy about the Senate.

Many Canadians have phoned me and have emailed me to say they no longer have any confidence or trust in the Senate and that they no longer have any use for the Senate. We are dealing with a government bill originating in the Senate that gives the government huge, sweeping powers and originates from an organization, the chamber down the hall, in which many Canadians have lost complete confidence. Many Canadians have lost complete confidence in the Conservative government's ability to use the Senate. They are calling upon the Government of Canada and us as parliamentarians to do away with the anachronistic and unrepresentative organization down the hall.

That then lends me to have some difficulty dealing with a bill that came from there when Canadians are saying they do not trust it. I am not certain that will not colour how we deal with future bills from the Senate, or even this bill. If this bill from the Senate, where I am told to not trust what they are doing, because the place is rife with difficulties, should this bill not have originated there? Should this bill, and any bill that were are dealing with, originate here in the House for it to be trusted and accountable to the people?

In terms of the actual specifics of what the government has done over the past few years, the example that jumps immediately to mind is Bill C-38 from last year, which was the first bill of the big 450-page omnibus bill that eliminated the old Environmental Assessment Act and replaced it with a new, more tepid, Environmental Assessment Act. "More tepid" is probably the best thing I could say about it. Buried in that act is exactly what this bill intends to make law:

(1) A regulation made under this Act may incorporate by reference documents that are produced by a person or body other than the Agency, including a federal authority referred to in any other paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition “federal authority” in subsection 2(1).

(2) A document may be incorporated by reference either as it exists on a particular date or as amended from time to time.

(3) The Minister must ensure that any document incorporated by reference in a regulation is accessible.

(4) For greater certainty, a document that is incorporated by reference into a regulation is not required to be transmitted for registration or published in the Canada Gazette by reason only that it is incorporated by reference.

Therein is the most telling example of what is intended by the government. This is not something that is benign or innocuous because some other agency does a better job of determining health and safety regulations. We now have given over to an agency and we have no idea who it is because the regulation has not yet been made.

Schedule 2 of that act said that the components of the environment that can be studied in an environmental assessment will be determined by regulation. Until that regulation is published, we cannot really study the environment. Now, we learn that the government can also incorporate by reference some other agency's determination of what the environment is. It can determine whether or not human health, the socio-economic well-being of Canadians and the physical, cultural, architectural and historical heritage are part of the environment. All of these things are no longer defined. They are incorporated by reference. That regulation now can be determined by some other body or agency.

Maybe that “some other body or agency” is a provincial government. Maybe it is a territorial government. Maybe it is the Government of Venezuela. It does not say.

There is nothing specific in this regulation whatsoever. It says we can do whatever we want. The minister can also enter into an agreement with a foreign state or a subdivision of a foreign state or any institution of any such government or an international organization of states or any institution of such an organization with respect to Canada's environment. This is part of what bothers me with this huge law. We are walking down a road that lends itself to letting other people decide what is good for Canadians and I want to know exactly what is in here. We have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what the government intends to do by suggesting that regulations defining the environment can be determined by some other body and can be amended from time to time by some other body. That body is not defined. There is no justification for doing that.

We have had an Environmental Assessment Act for many years that had a good definition of the environment. Why the government chose to change it, we can probably guess. This is a classic example of what we are afraid of. By making this legal, the government will take really key things that are important to Canadians and make the regulations governing them amendable by some third party and we have no idea who they are.

I am trying to be helpful here. I will give an example of something that might actually be a good way to incorporate a regulation by reference. If, for example, the Minister of Health were to determine that there needed to be a regulation governing diesel exhaust and its effect on humans adjacent to a rail corridor, something that is near and dear to the people in my riding, she might decide to make that regulation accord with the World Health Organization's standards, which most people agree are by far the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate standards. The World Health Organization would then be, by reference, the standard by which Canada would measure carcinogens and particulate matters as a way of regulating them. That may be an example of something where incorporation by reference is actually not a bad thing. We would not have to duplicate the effort of the World Health Organization. We could feed into the World Health Organization rather than creating our own system of measurements and standards. That is not all this bill says.

Another possibility is the Labour Code has health and safety regulations that include references to elements of the environment to which a worker in a federally regulated workplace might be exposed. There might be an organization out there that actually publishes good standards that all in the House could agree that, as amended from time to time, are not a bad way to go. However, we do not have any limit that says we should agree on them first.

In conclusion, we do not necessarily disagree with the premise, in some limited circumstances, of ambulatory references, references that can be changed from time to time without reference back to the House, but we need some strict controls on when and how they are used. That is not in this bill. We need the agreement of all in Parliament on the specific reference. That is not in this bill. We also need at least some guidelines and controls for the government to actually utilize when it is drafting legislation so that it knows that this is not something that will run afoul of the general agreement that we might be able to give if we can put some guidelines, controls and strictures around this regulation-setting power by the government.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member across the aisle for his speech. I would like just to go through a few points in it.

He did mention some of the changes that happened to Bill C-38 to amalgamate 41 different agencies into 3. Obviously, there were some changes there, and so I think some answers need to be forthcoming.

For example, he said the minister would be able to delegate authority to certain processes that had not been yet named. That is simply because we work with our provincial partners that have equivalency or may want to substitute certain environmental processes to ensure it gets done on a timely basis. Whoever has the most expertise, I think, should be in charge of that process, whether it be the federal government or the province. That is to be worked out.

However, if we look at labour and environmental health and safety, we work with the provinces all the time, and so when we harmonize these things, it would be better for business, better for Canadians—one set of rules.

Again, I have heard multiple references to amendments. People have said that we say we welcome amendments. I say we do.

However, here is the problem. The member for Kings—Hants, in Bill C-45, put 300 amendments forward, each one like 101 bottles of beer on the wall, such as asking for one day to be changed as to when the bill would then take effect.

I would like to hear from the member one amendment that is—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please.

The hon. member for York South—Weston.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member opposite if that is what Bill C-38 said. However, it does not say that we are to harmonize our regulations with the provinces. It does not say that at all. It says that the minister may make regulations that can be amended at any time and those regulations can reference other jurisdictions, not just the provinces. It could be anywhere. Bob's towing company could be the one setting the regulations for our environment. That is not acceptable.

If it specifically mentioned the provinces, I would not have a problem with it.

In my speech, I actually referred to some specific things that could be done to make this a better bill, but maybe he was not listening.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the member's comments on the bill, I thought he seemed to be very much focused with respect to the whole issue of delegation. He even made reference to a Latin phrase, I believe it was, in which it talks about how, if a person is delegated something, he or she should not be empowered to delegate. I respect what it is that the member is saying. I think it is a well-principled position.

If the bill passes and goes into committee stage, there should not be any doubt that there would be additional delegation from a group, so to speak, that was already delegated the responsibility.

Given the member's comments that he did not get elected to support that sort of thing, why would he then personally vote in favour of the bill going to second reading?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the same vein of what happens in a union meeting when somebody moves a motion, somebody seconds it so it can get discussed. That is what we are saying here. The government is doing it anyway. The government is actually passing these portions of its bills 170 times so far without any strictures around them. If we are going to stop the government doing certain things, the bill has to go to committee and amendments need to be brought forward to limit what the government is already doing.

I hear what he is saying about delegatus non potest delegare. That is a basic principle. However, as I also said, there may be, on rare occasions, places where it makes sense for Parliament to actually do that. We should examine ways of making that happen that would not be too scary.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciated my colleague's speech on the bill. I thought it was very well thought out. I was particularly interested in his opening comments in which he talked about the power of the executive, the power of the cabinet to make decisions that troubles even the government's own backbenchers, frankly, as we have read in the media in recent days and weeks. That is troubling, especially when we reflect on the things that have happened in the media in the last couple of weeks. Accountability really is at the core of what we are trying to establish, and the bill again tries to undermine some of that accountability.

Conservative Senator Linda Frum said: “Incorporation by reference is a widely used drafting technique currently, but this bill would legitimize it...”. This is really important. She is saying they are doing it already on the government side, but what they are trying to do now is cover themselves after the fact by bringing in legislation that would validate what they have been doing 170 times already.

I am not sure we want to provide that kind of cover retroactively. I wonder if my colleague could comment on whether he thinks it is appropriate to use a Senate bill to cover the government's butt—it is not Hamilton language, but it is probably as parliamentary as I can get here—whether that is an appropriate use of this kind of legislation to cover something that the executive has been doing without, frankly, the requisite authority.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly right. The bill retroactively fixes the problem the government ran into when it discovered what it was doing did not have the blessing of both chambers, did not have the blessing of the committees that deal with the status of regulations. One of the things we do not like to have happen is that, when government makes a mistake, it asks us to bless it retroactively. That is not something we are prepared to do.

On the other hand, if Conservatives convince us that there are occasions when this kind of behaviour warrants consideration by the houses of Parliament, then let us go there, let us have those discussions, but let us not get in the business of fixing the mistakes of the government retroactively in order to cover its backside.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a certain misunderstanding with regard to our position on this side of the House, so let me clear it up. We want to get this legislation forward because we actually want to study it and we want to improve it. I think that is what the official opposition does. It presents questions, it seeks weaknesses in legislation, it proposes amendments and, depending on the reaction we have from the other side, we decide whether or not it is valuable to support when it comes to the other readings.

My hon. colleague pointed out that there are substantial questions we have at this point. For example, what are the costs involved in guaranteeing access to incorporations by reference? What access-related obstacles could arise? Is the public generally aware of these regulations? What can we do about that? What sort of feedback can we receive from the public about these regulations and their accessibility? All these things would be good going forward. Also, what guarantees would be in place to ensure that the documents will eventually comply with the Official Languages Act? All these things I believe my hon. colleague spoke to and I would like simply for him to tell us whether or not that is indeed a valuable thing to engage in, and whether or not we will see any openness on behalf of the government?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if history is our guide, we will not see any agreement on the other side of the House to any possible amendments to the bill. However, like the man beating his head into the wall over and over again, we are going to go there again because we do want to make Parliament work. That is part of why we came here, to try to make laws that are good for all Canadians and to make Parliament work, to make both sides of the House actually do their job.

Therefore, we will examine the bill, examine whether we can support it with amendments and put those amendments forward to the other side. Hopefully, members will actually listen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate, although at times it can seem rather obtuse and obscure. There are all kinds of adjectives, I suppose, to describe it from the perspective of even parliamentarians who may not be as well versed as my colleague from Hamilton Mountain around the idea of regulatory change and what those regulatory statutes actually mean.

As someone who used to be a municipal councillor, I know all too well that when we pass things like a safe water act, for instance, in the province of Ontario, when the act comes to municipalities, it is not the act that scares us but the regulations. When the act comes down, it is about two and a half to three pages, and then the book comes, and it is sometimes really quite thick with the regulations that one now has to put into force or enact or find a way to do. It is those pieces that ultimately make that piece of legislation work and that form the backbone of the legislation, if you will. In fact, it would be the nuts and bolts. That is how it makes all of these things work.

Many of us in this place, I would suggest, know that we pass legislation and debate it in this place, but then off it goes somewhere else where the regulations that go behind the legislation to give it teeth or put meat on the bones are put in place, so it can go forward and actually mean something.

The regulations get drafted in different ways and it all becomes part of that bigger piece that the general public would see as that maze of government bureaucracy they say they deal with. They do not actually necessarily deal with the act specifically; they deal with the specific regulations, nine times out of ten. When they come to our office to complain about something, it is the regulation of the particular act they are complaining about, not the act that may have been passed in this House.

What I found quite astounding was the number of regulations. We are literally talking about thousands. At the moment there are at the federal level approximately 3,000 regulations comprising 30,000 pages of text.

For folks to wade through that material to find out what the regulations are that might impact them in whatever sphere of life they are in, whether it be business or other things they are partaking in as a general part of their lives, is quite a daunting task when they come up against something and they try to figure it out.

We find, to give it some sense of context, there are about 450 statutes of 13,000 pages. Again, the acts themselves that we pass here are such minor pieces of the overall legislation when the regulations are finally written and enacted and put behind it. That speaks to the volume of material that folks would have to navigate to try to figure out what they need to know, what they do not need to know and what their obligations and their rights are, because obviously regulations give us certain rights as well as obligations.

What if some folks breached one of the regulations? They need to understand the regulation because, as a traffic officer explained to me when I used to sit on a municipal police association board, going through a stop sign and saying we did not see it is not a defence. Ignorance of the law is no defence. If we did not see the traffic signal and just kept driving, that is not a defence. The same thing happens with regulations. The fact that we do not know about them is not a defence, because there is an obligation for us to know and understand them. It also gives us the right under the regulations to do certain things, whatever that happens to be, based on the regulations.

Ultimately it is a dual piece of rights and obligations. One needs to find a way to understand them, but to understand them, we have to be able to find them. When we talk about this incorporation, whether it be a static piece or an ambulatory piece, and lots of folks have gone through definitions of what are they, what they are not, and how they would change, how do those folks who actually look at them know that they have changed and say that they will act accordingly?

I know that I need to put x number of green books on a table, as they are in front of me here in the House, followed by three white books at the end. That is the regulation. Then somebody changes them, because it is an ambulatory piece of regulation. It is not static. We can take the three white books off the table and add two orange ones. New Democrats like orange, so we are going to put two orange ones down. Then we test everybody by asking them if they know how many green books are on the table and whether the three white ones are at the end. They would say yes, but they would fail, because we put two orange ones there. That means that they are out of office now, because they voted wrong, and the orange ones are going on the other side, which will probably happen in 2015, quite frankly. There was a change that nobody really knew about, and it was as simple as moving three books and putting two orange ones there.

What if we were to do that to food safety regulations? We have reciprocal agreements with our largest trading partner, the United States, and we have them with other countries around the world. They stand us well in a lot of different ways. We understand that we have a robust safety system in the agriculture sector at the producer level and when it comes to food processing and food handling. We accept that the United States also has a robust system. We accept as quid pro quo that what they do and what we do is good. We accept their standards and they accepts ours.

We get into this idea that we can change the regulations. Canada has regulations on our side and the United States has regulations on their side. We have similar regulations with our other trading partners. What if folks start changing food safety regulations? Most folks would say that they trust our American trading partner. They say that we do not have to worry about it. That country makes some changes that are probably okay and we will be fine. What happens if it is a country that is less trustworthy? I will not point the finger at any one country, but lots of us could identify a country where some of its food products have been less than safe, whether that be melamine in milk or other things that have happened.

What happens if those countries change a regulation and we change our regulation as well? Have we done our consumers justice by ensuring that the system is safe? We said that it was safe, and we changed the regulation, because it was an ambulatory regulation. We allowed it to be changed, because someone else changed it. We initially accepted a system that accepts other country's regulations. They changed one and we just accepted it, because we can do that now. No checks and balances are in place to make sure that we do not do that.

My colleague from Hamilton Mountain asked a question of my colleague from York South—Weston. We already know that a number of regulatory changes have been made, even though there was no authority to make them. I think she said that there were 170. It was not once or twice. My colleagues on the other side who sit with her on that committee also know that this is the case. They heard the testimony. It was not an issue of somebody slipping up and forgetting. One hundred and seventy times is a pattern. That is not a mistake. That is not a matter of somebody forgetting and forgetting to call the minister. The House should have looked at the information. It should have gone through the process and it should have had its due course. It does not seem as if that is right.

If we are now, as my colleague has said, changing legislation to cover off that period, and those 170 plus go forward, how do we ensure the rights of this House and of parliamentarians to do the job people want us to do? Our role is not just overseeing the public purse to hold government to account. If regulatory changes are coming down from different boards or agencies within the federal government's domain, then surely we should have the right to ensure that we have input.

My colleague from Okanagan—Coquihalla spoke quite eloquently about the idea that this is a non-partisan committee. It is made up of all kinds of folks who do not actually vote. It has a sense of building consensus. I am not too sure that the legislation says that. What happens if it becomes the executive that takes on that role and the rest of us do not have an oversight role? We are looking for answers to some of those questions.

That is why we want to send it to committee and look at amendments. Even though my friends across the way may not be happy about it, we want to send it to committee to try to make it better. They would be pleased with that rather than upset by the fact that we may not be saying the nicest of things about it. One would think that it is what they would want us to do, even though we are pointing out what we do not think works well. We will help them out, unlike my friends down at the end who do not want to vote to send it to committee and do not want to study it. That is their choice. Earlier I heard something about an open mind. I guess it is a closed mind on this particular issue, but that is the way it goes. They have decided against it, and that is okay. That is the great choice with democracy. One gets to decide whether to say yes or no. In this case, we will vote to send it to committee and study it. Ultimately, it is about democracy. It is about our right to have a say and have input with respect to legislation and its regulations.

As I said at the beginning, the regulations are quite often more important to people than the bill. Ironically, quite often, we get tied up looking at the bill. It is very important, no question. I would never want to suggest to the drafters of the legislation that somehow it is not important. There might be some parts of the legislation that the other side drafts that we would not find important or would vote against, and have. Budgets come to mind. However, regulations clearly have an impact on people's lives and that is what they run up against quite often, not the specifics of an act. That is where folks have difficulty.

I recognize that the other place exists, at least for now. If Canadians were allowed to vote probably over 70% would vote. We know that there is a constitutional requirement to have seven provinces and 50% of the population and so forth. We all know that. However, if we asked Canadians tomorrow if they wanted that place, they would want to get rid of it. My friends down at the far end still want to defend it in some sort of beleaguered way, since their leader said just two weeks ago that they just need better guys in there, not better people, which would include women. I can see where he is coming from when it comes to that. I certainly can tell him that I know a lot of women who were not pleased when he said that.

Bill S-12 started in the other place. One of my colleagues earlier talked about bills starting there or here, but they always have to come here. In my view, they all ought to start right here. There should be no bills starting with an “S”. They should all start with a “C”, and we should deal with them. This is the people's House. We will pass them if indeed that is the will of the people's House. We do not need the Senate to either rubber-stamp bills or throw them out. That is what they did to my good friend and leader Jack Layton. It did not even take the time to look at the bill. It tossed it aside. That is not democracy when the Senate tosses aside a bill that this House has passed twice.

If that is their attitude, not to mention the latest shenanigans that have gone on over their expenses, then it is time for them to go. It is long overdue. The time is long since past.

I said something months ago in the debate on what was the Senate reform bill, which seems to have disappeared. It has gone off to the Senate now, it seems. At the time I said this to my colleagues across the way, it just happened that one of Canada's favourite coffee houses, Tim Hortons, was having its roll up the rim contest at the same time as we were debating. I was standing right here, as a matter of fact, and I said, “Mr. Speaker, it is time to roll up the red carpet”, just like we roll up the rim.

Canadians will be the winners when we roll up the red carpet. Every single Canadian would not have to worry about rolling up the rim and maybe winning a donut or a coffee or a car. Not everybody gets one; I have rolled up many a rim and not gotten too many winning roll-ups, I must admit. However, without a doubt every Canadian would win if we rolled up the red carpet.

We would roll up that red carpet and wish them all well. I would be the first to stand in line, shake all their hands and wish them well. I would not have a problem doing that and I would do it with a smile on my face and a sincere thanks to many of them.

There are many good folks down there. Hugh Segal is a prime example. I think Senator Hugh Segal is a remarkable individual, a remarkable Canadian who does remarkable work. Unfortunately, it is time for Senator Segal to go.

Senator Kirby was a remarkable man down there as well, and he did remarkable work. He left on his own. Romeo Dallaire is also in the Senate. There are a great number of them. We have identified three, but over the years there have been a good number of them. We have given three examples; finding three is not bad for New Democrats.

However, we cannot find a New Democrat down there, probably because they do not want to go there.

I see my friends down at the end are a little restless. Clearly they are worried about the appointment that is never going to come, so the hour must be getting late. It truly must.

I would invite my colleagues down the way to come with me. In fact I invited my colleague from Winnipeg North last fall. He probably does not remember, but I invited him to come with me. Let me try to quote myself again. I invited my colleague to come arm in arm with me to walk down the hall together, roll up the red carpet, wish them a Merry Christmas and send them on their way, never to return. It is not Christmastime, but we could wish them happy holidays and ask them to not ever come back.

Oddly enough, if we had had regulations and had done it the way that this government suggested and that place was regulated, we could just have changed the regulations and gotten rid of them all. Unfortunately, we do not.

I have less than two minutes left. I really want to thank my colleague on the other side. I say this with great sincerity, because he has been the person who is really keen on this legislation. He has been up asking questions and he debated earlier. I give credit to the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla. He actually answers.

He and I also have an affinity for wine. We have the two greatest wine regions in the country, Niagara being the finest and his being after that.

However, what I would like to say is that there are a whole pile of others on the other side who really have not been bothering with the legislation. They do not seem to want to bother with the legislation, so let me just say this to them: I would love to give them the opportunity to discuss their own bill. Therefore, I move:

That the House do now adjourn.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #694

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I declare the motion lost.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with all this discussion about rolling up the rims or carpets, it seems like the NDP—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. I appreciate the enthusiasm from the House at this time in the evening, but if members have conversations they want to carry on that have nothing to do with the debate, please take them outside the chamber.

The hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, getting order is always an important part of House business.

The hon. member for Welland brought up the topic of rolling up the rim and rolling up red carpets and whatnot. I would just like to remind the NDP members that they should really be rolling up their sleeves and working in the House for Canadians.

I have a part comment, part question, and I will try to put it as succinctly as I can. The member said, and other members have stressed this as well, that 170 different statutes have gone through the House that somehow are not lawful. He says that there are cases where incorporation by reference has not been used properly. That is not true.

Each one of these bills has gone through our process here. As parliamentarians, if there are any mistakes that have gone through, it has been under our supervision.

I would simply invite the member to take a look at what is being presented, a codified way, recommended by the scrutiny of regulations committee. I would like to hear if the member actually has an amendment he would like to carry forward. There is continual discussion about the need for amendments. I would like to hear what that amendment would be.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would certainly roll up my sleeves, in fact, I will roll them up now, but I do not think the Speaker will let me take my jacket off, since that is in the House rules.

The issue is clearly one of who wants to look at this. As I said earlier in my remarks, the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla actually does. There is no question that he truly finds great passion in this, and I commend him for that.

There is not a lot of folks in the House who would actually want to sit on that committee. If I asked volunteers to put their hands up if they really wanted to go on that committee, I would probably not find too many hands. There is a couple and a couple more.

For my colleague, the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, he ought to write those names down. Then the next time you need a sub in, you should ask those folks who put their hand up to come and help you out—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would again point out to the member for Welland, please direct your comments to the Chair.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if you could help me inform the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, it looks like there might be friends who want to substitute in for him when he is not available to go to his committee.

All I can say to my friend across the way, through you, Mr. Speaker, is “stay tuned”. He will be at the committee and he will hear what good constructive amendments are going to come from the New Democrats.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with the issue of incorporation by reference.

I made reference to this earlier, and will continue to do so, in regard to the third party. It does not even have to be a government agency. It could be any sort of a standard organization, anywhere internationally, nationally or wherever it might be.

We should focus attention on international standards, where there is a third party of that nature which develops a standard. Quite often that standard will be unilingual, primarily in English but there are other languages.

The Liberal Party has expressed concern with regard to Canada being a bilingual nation and the impact of not having both official languages being properly recognized through a delegated regulation.

Would the member share that concern we have expressed and is that one of his amendments?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, being in a caucus that has a predominant number of members, great colleagues, great friends, from the great province of Quebec, clearly we understand the need. Our country is indeed a bilingual country. We have two official languages. The House recognizes that we work in both of them. In fact, all hon. members agree with that and do their utmost to ensure we continue to do that.

The weakness we see is the potential for third party regulators to do something that perhaps would not be in both official languages. We do not know that this would happen, but the potential is there. This is why that clearly becomes a piece that needs to be looked at as the bill is scrutinized at second reading, in committee and is given the due diligence that it deserves and needs to have put to it.

I would hope one of the things that comes back to the House is the sense that if we are to go down this road, in whatever way that happens, both official languages will always be, first and foremost, a requirement of those particular regulatory changes as we move forward.

I look forward to those discussions and we will see where it takes us.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to commend my colleague on his excellent speech, which shed a great deal of light on Bill S-12.

Since the bill raises a huge number of questions and concerns, we want to support it so that it is sent to committee and we can propose amendments.

In November 2012, the hon. Mac Harb shared some of his observations. He said:

...Bill S-12, as presented, undermines democratic principles by eroding Parliament's oversight of legislation, and it will make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens who will not have adequate access to the content of Canadian laws.

Could my colleague comment on that?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that colleagues have pointed out a number of times tonight is the potential to change things and then expect folks to understand them or know about them and perhaps have illegal implications. That is what stands out for folks as well as ensuring it is in both official languages. It becomes a dilemma for people who have to follow a regulation under the penalty of perhaps the law not knowing that it has actually changed. They may be living under a regulation that no longer exists.

My colleague for Okanagan—Coquihalla talked about where the number 170 came from. When the Minister of Justice came before the committee he said that since 2006, he found that the express authorization of Parliament had not been given to changes 170 times. Therefore, the number 170 comes from the Minister of Justice, from the Conservative government. He gave the committee that number.

I know the hon. member for Niagara Falls quite well, and I know him to be a very honourable man. Therefore, when he said that it happened 170 times, I believe him, quite frankly. Albeit, there may have been some confusion around some different thing, and there were issues around this happening. However, we need a process that actually works, and that is what this debate is about.

We want the bill to go to committee to be studied in an appropriate way. If changes need to be made to it, which we think there should be, then those changes will be made. Indeed, it will come back as better legislation. If not, I guess we will vote and figure out where it goes. Ultimately, it is about trying to work the legislation.

I hope my friends on the other side would see this in the sense that we should study the bill and make it better. At the end of the day, we are entrusted to make better legislation. When we say that we want the bill to go to committee to look at it, debate it, have witnesses and propose amendments to make it better legislation, surely the government wants us to do that.

In fact, I know it does because I heard the Prime Minister say so many time since I came to this place in 2008. I am paraphrasing but the Prime Minister would look across the way to us and say “give us your good ideas”. Well, we are going to give our good ideas. The Prime Minister asked for them and we are about to give them. Hopefully the Conservatives will see they are good ideas and accept them.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to say that I have been looking forward to speaking to this particular issue for some period of time, actually. Indeed, if we really look at it, we will see many important aspects of the incorporation by reference in regulations act. In fact, it speaks about the future, about being prepared for the future and about making sure that we are able as a government to adapt to what is new.

I speak particularly of change relating to, for instance, the world economic crisis. Our government responded in a very positive way, much like we would with changes to regulations to respond to international or domestic treaties. I would say that we responded by way of an infrastructure rollout such as this country has never seen before. I speak particularly of Canada's economic action plan and the investments in roads, street lights, security for airports, and water and waste water infrastructure. I speak of many recreational facilities across this country that have benefited Canadians. I also speak about the thousands upon thousands of jobs that Canada's economic action plan created, especially in provinces that do not have the economic activity of my province. I speak specifically of Quebec, where I have seen an increase in the quality of life through roadways, water and waste water infrastructure and a cleanup of the environment. All of these things were brought in as a result of change, and the need to change, by our Conservative government.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that this is going to come as somewhat of a surprise to you. Not only has Canada been the most successful country in the world with respect to the economy, but there was one party in the House that voted against each and every one of those economic activities. It is true. Even my colleagues cannot believe it. There were members in the House who voted against Canada's economic action plan, the plan that has been raved about by the G8 and G20 and that has identified Canada as having the best banking system in the world and one of the most successful recoveries, with over 900,000 net new jobs. That party was the New Democratic Party in the House. I witnessed it with my own eyes when New Democrats voted against job recovery. They are applauding now, because they remember what they did. They remember that they stood against this government as we created what can only be said is the best recovery in the world from a deep world economic crisis.

The Liberal Party supported us in some of those bills. I would have to give it credit. Of course, Canadians looked at it a little differently, and that is why they returned the Liberal Party with the fewest number of members in its history. I think that had something to do with the $25 billion it stripped from provincial transfers back in the 1990s. Speaking of changes in statutory instruments, Liberals changed the way the law worked. They changed how provinces and the federal government are supposed to work.

We know, for instance, about the relationship we have built up as a Conservative government with all of the provinces and territories, with every level of government, including, of course, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which today identified this Conservative federal government as a government that is prepared to act in the best interests of Canadians by coming forward with a new infrastructure plan, which it was very satisfied with.

We have done a lot that has been asked of us and we have done that because of the need for change. Change comes in many ways. This bill talks about drafting techniques that offer many advantages because for example, reducing needless duplication or repetition of materials such as provincial legislation when there are current federal and provincial legislative regimes that need to be harmonized.

That is what this government does. Our job is to represent Canadians in the best way we possibly can in saving them money that is unnecessarily spent, by standing up, as the NDP now knows it should have, to support our government when we brought forward $45 billion of economic activity in partnership with provinces, territories and municipalities.

In 2004, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities identified $123 billion in an infrastructure deficit across this country. As a result of 13 years of the Liberals ignoring provincial and territorial governments and stripping $25 billion from their transfers, we had no choice but to react immediately and come up with a plan, a one-page application, a simple process that we have had tremendous reviews about. We work with provincial governments to bring one third, municipal governments bring in one third and we invest one third of Canadian taxpayers' money back into roads and bridges. The NDP voted against it.

There might be some repetition in tonight's speeches because I am very passionate about the opportunity to speak. Some parties in this place, in my mind, do not represent Canadians as they should, especially when we are faced with an economic crisis like the world has never seen before. That is the time when all of the members in House elected by Canadians should stand with the government to protect our economy and our jobs.

We have seen an amazing thing happen over the last 20 years; first the Liberals ignoring Canadians and stripping the $25 billion in transfers and then the New Democratic Party not standing up for Canadians. It is rather shameful and I understand their passion in relation to that.

I would like to answer a couple of questions regarding the incorporation by reference in regulations act because it is very important. Obviously, this government does make changes as necessary and we are doing it in this case as well. One might ask what is incorporation by reference. It is a legislative drafting technique most often used in regulations and it consistently allows the reference documents to form part of the regulations without actually being reproduced. That means that as a result of laying down proper ground rules we do not need to cut down a lot more trees. In fact it not only saves the trees, but it is more economically viable for the country. There is no sense in wasting taxpayers' money. They work hard for it.

In my riding most people work 12 hours a day and then they travel about two hours back and forth to go to work, about 30 kilometres. They enjoy one of the best qualities of life in the world and certainly one of the best qualities of life in Canada. The Clearwater River Valley, only about three blocks from my home, is one of the most beautiful places in the world to fish. I have posted on Facebook a picture of my fishing boat. I think it is time for a change, just like the change necessary for incorporation by reference in regulations act. That change is my opportunity to return to my constituency, go two blocks down to the Clearwater River Valley and to go fishing with my constituents and supporters for some period of time this summer. That is the change that I am looking forward to.

It is unfortunate that I am running out time. The types of regulations that use incorporation by reference would be shipping and marine safety acts, energy efficiency acts and hazardous products. I would hate to see the NDP stand in the way of all the safety products and marine products that need to be brought in as well by this legislation.

I see my time is up. I would just like to say in closing that I really hope the NDP supports this government in the future and sees how important it is that we make these changes in the best interests of Canadians.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the member that this party did not vote against economic action.

I voted against eviscerating environmental legislation. I voted against paying temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadians. I voted against bringing temporary foreign workers in to replace Canadians in their jobs. I voted against seniors having to work another two years. I voted against removing protection from the Humber River, the Clearwater River and hundreds and thousands of other rivers as part of the economic action plan. I voted against failing impoverished seniors. I voted against cuts to the disabled. I voted against cuts to EI.

That is our record. That is what we did, and that is what we will continue to do when the government continues to hide these horrible things inside other legislation.

As far as this particular piece of legislation goes, you have heard from me already. I am very nervous about where the power-hungry and power-seeking Conservative government is going to take it, but we are willing to send it to committee so that we can try to improve it. I do not expect that the government will allow it to be improved, but we will see.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was here then and I do not remember them voting against that.

I do remember them voting against Canada's economic action plan. I remember them voting against the first $33 billion. I remember them voting against $12 billion in infrastructure stimulus. I remember them voting against just about everything we have put forward.

I judge by results, and I think that is what most Canadians judge by. They judge by whether they have a job or not. We have created over 900,000 new jobs.

We see that the member across the way voted against $241 million to improve on-reserve income assistance programs. He voted against $5 million to expand facilities at Cape Breton University for the Purdy Crawford Chair in Aboriginal Business Studies throughout Canada. He voted against $10 million to inspire and help young aboriginal people all across the country. What he voted against most of all, and every time in the House, is the opportunity to train aboriginal Canadians to have jobs in colleges, universities and trade schools right across the country.

That is what we are doing as a government. We are making sure that we stand up not only for the youth of the country, who have one of the highest unemployment rates of any group and sector in the country, but also for the aboriginal and needy people right across the country.

It is not about a handout; it is about a hand up, so that people can feel good about themselves, take pride in what they do and feel good about being Canadian.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I see there is a great deal of discretion extended to the member in not being relevant to the bill, even though he did make reference to it periodically.

That said, it is interesting that the member talks about the Canada economic action plan. Every Canadian knows about it. They do not have a choice. The government is using millions of tax dollars on advertising. With every ad we see on the NHL, imagine the government said, "Put $100,000 on an ad and deny 32 summer students a job".

That is the priority. The government's priority is a net increase in taxes. That is the reality of the government: hundreds of millions of dollars in net tax increases. What about annual deficits and the huge deficit? The government started with a surplus and turned it into a billion-dollar deficit. That is the record of the Conservative government.

My question to the member in regard to the bill itself is about international standards. Does he not share the concerns that we have expressed regarding third parties being able to incorporate laws that would be applied to all Canadians? Could it mean standards being applied from a unilingual organization? Does he not have a concern about that?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member asked that question. What type of material is incorporated by reference? Federal, provincial or foreign legislation. This includes standards developed as part of Canada's national standards system, including those of the Canadian Standards Association, the CSA. There are currently over 400 references to these types of standards in federal regulations.

International standards, such as the standards written by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, most people see that. Members will see we are taking care of business.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand here at 11 o'clock at night to have the opportunity to speak to the Statutory Instruments Act.

First, I am not very pleased that the bill has come from the Senate. I find this is an inappropriate direction for legislation of this nature. It should have come from the House of Commons.

Right now, at the aboriginal affairs committee, we are dealing with another piece of legislation, Bill S-8, which also came from the Senate. That legislation has been panned by almost everyone who is standing in front of our committee because it does not have the ability to provide resources for the things that are required within the bill.

A Senate bill cannot put a financial burden on the government. Therefore, that bill is not effective. It is also the wrong direction, as well.

That aside, when we look at the bill, it is an interesting one. I think we have all learned a lot through this debate tonight, and I am sure the debate will continue on it because it is a very important bill. As my colleagues pointed out, it would make 170 decisions of the government legal after being illegal for a number of years.

There is a lot to regulation. There are 3,000 regulations on the books, consisting of 30,000 pages. There are also 1,000 draft regulations every year. That says that those 3,000 regulations are being changed constantly. There is change within the system. That change has the scrutiny of Parliament, its officers and its staff. That is taken care of within the confines of our Government of Canada.

We now have a bill that would open up change to our regulations from a variety of sources that we would no longer have control over. What is going to happen here?

In the bill, there is a section which says, “The power to make a regulation also includes the power to incorporate by reference an index, rate or number”. Now, we do not have definitions of those three things, but I guess we can assume that they cover most of the gamut of what regulations are. It goes on to say, “as it exists on a particular date or as it is varied from time to time”. Therefore, as it varies, it can be incorporated. It goes on to say, “established by Statistics Canada, the Bank of Canada”, all good institutions. I do not have a problem with those institutions helping with regulations. Then it says, “or a person or body other than the regulation-making authority”

As my colleague from Fort McMurray—Athabasca said, this can be Canadian regulations, it can be provincial regulations, or it can be international regulations.

We now have a situation where we are going to incorporate regulations under Parliament that are made in other countries. It sounds good. Countries make choices. They may be very good choices. However, those regulations can also be varied in those countries and we have no control over that. We would have no control over what would go on with those regulations when they are varied in those countries.

How does that fit with sovereignty? I am not here to sell Canadian sovereignty. That is not my goal in this Parliament, I am sorry. Canadians need to control the regulations that are created by Parliament. They need to have a say over how those regulations are changed, whether they come through the provinces, whether they come through bodies in Canada, or whether they come through international bodies. That is quite clearly the case. That is what most Canadians will want.

What we have is a situation where we need some amendments to the bill. We need to limit the ability to take on changes that are made in bodies outside our country. We need to ensure that changes made to regulations that are made within Canada have the scrutiny of Parliament through its procedures, through its committees that are set up to do exactly that. Those are types of amendments that could be made to the legislation to make it more palatable to most people when they understand the nature of what is going on with this innocuous named bill.

It does not sound very threatening and, if handled correctly in the interest of Canadians, with the understanding of Canadian sovereignty, it works out quite well, unless it is used as a tool in international trade agreements to take on regulations so that we can make trade deals with other countries and take on their regulations.

We are into the European Union right now. The European Union will demand a lot of things of Canada. It is going to demand that Canada do things the way the European Union does them. That is what it wants, if we want to have a trade deal with the European Union.

This is an opportunity to give the European Union exactly that. We could take on the regulations of the European Union for many things. We could put them into our system, and in the future, if they make changes to those regulations, those will fit into our system as well.

How does that fit with sovereignty? I do not buy it. I stand here today and say that if I do not hear a better argument against this, I cannot buy this legislation. If I do not see some kind of amendments in it that actually protect my country from having changes made to its laws by other countries without the scrutiny of this Parliament, I cannot buy that. That is not for me. If it is for you, then I say you should go back to your constituents and tell them what you are doing with Canada.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, he is telling you to go back to your constituents.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The “you” can be used in the collective, generic sense, and that is the way I interpret it being used on this occasion.

I have to advise the House that I did not feel any compulsion to react and take action as a result of the “you” used in this context.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I have to say that your wisdom has increased ever since you have become a Speaker, Mr. Speaker.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Oh come on, apologize.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

The foreign investment protection act is another piece of legislation that just went through. The foreign investment protection act means if we change legislation regulations in Canada and it does not fit what the foreign investors had expected from our country, then they have the right to complain, to take action.

All of a sudden now we are in a position where regulations that are decided somewhere else by someone else other than this Parliament can make that a probability, perhaps a reality. Those are things we have to think about with this.

We are changing the way we are doing business. Is the way we are changing doing business the way we want to do that? I would say right now that, to me, amendments to the bill are needed.

I understand why people want to have the bill, the necessity to do the things that make sense with the bill. It is good to have regulations that can recognize inflation and the changing nature of our society, that can do those things that make sense. I do not have a problem with that. I am in favour of that, but I am not in favour of impeding our sovereignty in any way through changing the way we make regulations. That is clear. I do not have to think twice about that.

When we talk about Bill S-8, about the safety of drinking water on our first nations reserves, we are talking about a law that enables regulations, and those regulations will probably be made in provinces. Those provinces will change those regulations for safe drinking water as time goes on. That is the reality of the situation.

We have a fiduciary responsibility to first nations in the government. We need to ensure that any changes that are made to regulations are run by the first nations to whom we will apply this law. Therefore, we need to have the opportunity to look at changes, to consult with our first nations about changes that are made by provinces if we adopt their regulations to govern safe drinking water on first nations reserves. There is another instance of why we need to look at this legislation.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a few members who have spoken tonight obviously believe in the independence of the Bank of Canada, and that is a great thing. The member for Timmins—James Bay has actually said publicly that part of the NDP policy would be to interrupt that independence. I am glad to hear we have NDP members who disagree with that. Many economists believe that neutrality is very important and fundamental to the Bank of Canada.

Specific to what the member has said, sovereignty is always Canada's. We debate here in the House and we pass laws. Those laws then go to the delegated authority, whether it be a minister's office or whatnot. Regulations are created and those regulations are then put in the Gazette. The Gazette calls for open consultation. The whole process is there. Everything is lawful and has the scrutiny of Parliament. In fact, a committee is in charge of that. I would suggest the member become familiar with that.

We hear time and time again that NDP members will support the legislation but they might want to have amendments. Every member I have asked tonight has declined to point to one area where they would put forward an amendment. We know the official languages component is there. We know there is due process and we are not giving up sovereignty.

I would ask the member to bring up one amendment that he thinks needs to be brought into this bill at justice committee.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, maybe it is the late hour or perhaps that very enthusiastic member has been listening to a lot of the debate intently and perhaps he missed it when I mentioned the type of amendments I would like to see made to the bill.

I said I would like to see amendments that would ensure that any regulatory change that came through the incorporation by reference of any regulations, any of those changes that were made by any body other than the Parliament of Canada, would be subject to the scrutiny of this Parliament. That type of amendment would give us comfort that that is going to happen with this legislation.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his speech.

This bill is far from perfect. We need only look at the work of the Senate committee and the debate that was held in the Senate to see that this bill has some serious flaws. That is why we want to study it further in committee and hear from experts to find out what can be changed.

One of the flaws in this bill is that many of the terms are rather vague, including the word “accessibility”. What is meant by accessibility? When the bill says that information is accessible, does it mean that the information is public, or does it mean that the information will be accessible to people who have special needs, for example?

Can my colleague comment on the senators' work and the flaws in this bill?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I did not really touch on the issue of accessibility, but accessibility in terms of understanding regulation would probably be determined by the ability of whoever is dealing with these regulations to have the kind of professional assistance that is needed to wade through regulations and understand how they work.

I have been in business and I know that the regulations that are needed to conduct a business in many cases are very complex, and they require a very good understanding of them. There are many. Sometimes in business one understands the regulation but if it changes, one can be caught many times. That is a reality of life in business. A small business without the resources to ensure it has accountants and lawyers working for it to understand the regulations well may find it has innocently broken the regulations. That is the unfortunate reality of life in this country.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have the opportunity to speak to this bill. I was not sure when it first came up that I wanted to speak to it, but I started to receive a lot of calls and emails from concerned Canadians, Semhar Tekeste. She said to me that I had to get in and speak to this bill and that it was very, very important. She called me so many times today. She emailed me a number of times and said that I had to get into the House and talk about this bill. She said specifically that Bill S-12, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act and to make consequential amendments to the statutory instruments regulations is very important, and she wanted me to come in here and speak to it. The more I looked at it, the more I thought to myself that it is a very important bill.

The member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca earlier talked about how hard his constituents work. They work 12 hours a day, and then they sometimes have to drive a couple of hours to get home. I wonder how they would feel knowing that the opposition cannot wait to get out of here. We hear so much about the orange wave, the orange tide. Apparently, the tide does not come in after 6 o'clock. After 6 o'clock that is the end of the tide. They do not want to come into work. They are too tired.

We should make no mistake. Canadians do not pay us a little to be here. All of us are very fortunate. We make $150,000 to be in this place to debate the issues that are important to Canadians, yet the NDP members want to go home. I have heard them all day talk about how lazy the Senate is, and they want to abolish the Senate. I now understand why the NDP members are so desperate to abolish the Senate. They are actually embarrassed that the Senate works harder than they do, so they want to abolish the Senate. It is actually unbelievable. Here we are in a time of global economic uncertainty, and at 10 o'clock, they have to go home. I cannot fathom that. I guess, on their behalf, I will apologize to all those Canadians who invest so much in this place.

My parents came to this country. They worked hard. I talked about this last night. They owned a pizza store when I was young. They got up at 10 o'clock every morning, and they were at the store. They worked all day and all night until 3 o'clock the next morning. They worked very hard to support the family. They never once complained. They worked extraordinarily hard, long hours. They never once complained about how difficult their lot was in life. They did not try to pass a motion to go home at 10:30. When people called the store and wanted to order pizza, they did not say they had to vote because they maybe wanted to go home early. They did not do that. They did what all other Canadians do. They worked hard. They invested in their families. They invested in their business, and they were proud to do it. I wish sometimes that the NDP, and in fact the Liberals, would actually consider those hard-working Canadians who have sent us here before they decide to go home.

We also heard the opposition talk about the loss of Canadian sovereignty. It seems to me that I have heard this before. That is what the NDP said when it opposed the auto pact. It opposed the auto pact because it worried about sovereignty. Free trade came around, and it did not want free trade, because it felt we would lose our sovereignty. The fact of the matter is that the auto pact created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Free trade has created millions of jobs and incredible economic growth in our country. We have not lost sovereignty. In fact, we have increased our sovereignty, because now we are one of those countries in the world where everyone wants to invest. We have created over 900,000 jobs, in part because we are open to trade, yet they want to turn their backs on that.

When I heard the member from Fort McMurray talk about his hard-working constituents, I could not help but feel somewhat embarrassed for the NDP and Liberals, because they had to go home early. However, let me tell all Canadians, who I know are watching intently, especially on this particular debate on this bill, that the Conservatives on both sides of the House will stay here, debate and talk about the issues that are important to them, no matter how long it takes to make sure that we continue this economic recovery we have seen.

Let us talk a bit about this further. I will read this to the House. It states:

...regulations that use this technique are effective in facilitating intergovernmental co-operation and harmonization, a key objective of the Regulatory Cooperation Council established by our Prime Minister and President Obama.

How exciting is that? This would eliminate red tape. I understand that on that side of the House red tape is something they revel in because it confuses people. It slows down the economy. It makes it harder for business.

On this side of the House we are all about eliminating red tape. We are about unleashing the potential of the economy, of small businesses, of those sectors that create jobs, economic growth and value for Canadians, all of which help put more money in the pockets of Canadians so they can invest in themselves and their families. That is what we are trying to do on this side of the House each and every day. Even if the NDP members are desperate to shut down debate, like they do every single night in this place, we will still work on that.

It goes even further to state:

Referencing material that is internationally accepted rather than attempting to reproduce the same rules in the regulations also reduces technical differences that create barriers to trade—

That part is so exciting. I will read it again because it references something I know the NDP know nothing about, which is trade.

Referencing material that is internationally accepted rather than attempting to reproduce the same rules in the regulations also reduces technical differences that create barriers to trade—

How exciting is that for the millions of Canadians at home watching this tonight thinking that finally they have a government that is prepared to make those types of changes so that we can make things better for them?

I will flip over a couple of pages because this is where it gets really exciting. It mentions that with this important regulatory tool come corresponding obligations. It then states:

[The bill] not only recognizes the need to provide a solid legal basis for the use of this regulatory drafting technique, but it also expressly imposes in legislation an obligation on all regulators to ensure that the documents they incorporate are accessible—

It is almost remarkable that we have waited so long to pass this. Honestly, we have been seized with a global economic crisis in this country. We have been seized with putting more money in the pockets of Canadians. We have been seized with opening up new markets for our manufacturers and getting new trade deals out there. We are working on a trade deal with the European Union. We have been seized with creating better relations with our American friends.

We all know what the Liberals did to our relations with the United States when they were stomping on dolls of the American presidents and insulting them all the time. We came to an historic low in those bilateral relations.

We have been bringing our budget back into balance while at the same time investing in Canadians and infrastructure across this country so that as we come out of the global economic downturn ahead of anybody else, we have the resources and the infrastructure in place so that our Canadian businesses, families and communities can succeed.

I am yelling a bit because I was not sure that the microphones are working. I heard the member from Hamilton and the member for Newton—North Delta screaming so much I thought the microphones were down, so I thought I would elevate my voice.

I am proud of the fact that this concerned Canadian called me and sent me an email as late as 10 o'clock asking me to come and talk to the bill. I responded that for her and for the millions of Canadians who are relying on us, I am prepared to work late and do whatever I have to do to make sure that this economy and this country remain great. I am only sorry that the opposition members do not feel that same sense of passion.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, after that vote we had, I was extremely excited because my colleagues across the room came to life for the first time this evening since seven o'clock. Suddenly they are ready to speak and actually participate in parliamentary debate. Let us have a big round of applause for my colleagues across the way.

Also, while we are praising ourselves, I want to remind my colleague across the way that for youth in this country, unemployment is at double digits. I am told this piece of legislation here, this technical bill, will open up all kinds of doors, but when we look at it, what is it? Its aim is to give more power to the executive branch so that regulations can be changed without parliamentary scrutiny. Is this the job creation policy of the government across the way? Is this it?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in debate, I talked about the NDP. It was formed in 1961. In 1962 we had an election in this country, and the New Democrats lost. In 1963 we had an election, and they lost. In 1965 we had an election, and they lost. In 1968 we had an election, and they lost. In 1972 we had an election; they lost. In 1974 we had an election; they lost. In 1979, they lost. In 1980, they lost. In 1984, they lost. In 1988 and 1993, they lost. In 2004 and 2000, they lost.

One would think that a party that has lost 16 straight elections would finally come to understand that maybe what its members are talking about does not resonate with Canadians. One would think that especially a member from British Columbia who has just seen her party go from 20 points ahead in the polls to losing an election would at some point think to herself that maybe what they are doing just is not working, that maybe Canadians have no confidence in them and that is why they have lost so many elections.

Our job creation is one of the best in the world. I will take our record of job creation any day over the NDP's plans for a $21-billion carbon tax that would devastate the economy.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to encourage the parliamentary secretary to reassure the scattered New Democrats across the way there that the sky is not falling. It is not falling because of this bill, as it did not fall because of the Auto Pact bill, as it did not fall because of the free trade bill, as it did not fall because of the softwood lumber bill, which everyone in the softwood lumber industry supported.

The sky did not fall, it is not going to fall, and it will never fall as long as the Conservatives are sitting on this side in government and the New Democrats maintain their consistent loss record.

Could the parliamentary secretary reinforce that?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what a solid question from a member who has been in this House for so long and who has been returned consistently by the people of his community seven times to represent them here in this place.

What is so exciting about winning seven times is that earlier today the Liberals were suggesting that when members like that have been re-elected seven times, somehow the people in those ridings did not know what they are talking about and we should somehow be ashamed of all of those hard-working Reform, Alliance and Progressive Conservative members who now form government. I am not.

The only way that the sky will ever fall is if that party ever made it to this side of the House. That is why we are going to ensure that never happens.

That said, we know that those members do not work past six o'clock anyway, and they want to go home. With that type of track record, there is no way they will make it from that side of the House to this side of the House. They should look over there and see what happens when they do not work for Canadians. They end up on that side of the House.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to speak on this bill. I can assure you that I am equally excited about being able to stand in the House to talk to Canadians about the importance of the bill. I am proud to see this bill finally reach the floor of the House of Commons.

I, too, am disturbed by what I witnessed just an hour ago. New Democrats stood in the House, those who were here to vote, and told Canadians that it was time to go. My colleagues and I are here to work and get things done. That is why we were elected.

I take great inspiration from the people who work in my constituency, the people who sent me to Ottawa, who are working still tonight. I hear the NDP members groan. The member for Western Arctic said that he does not believe it.

Tonight I was on the phone with several farmers, who are tonight working around the clock to get their crops in. They are not making a motion to say that it is time to go home and shut the place down. This is not what Canadians do. Farmers do not do that. Loggers do not do that. Oil workers do not do that. People who work throughout my constituency do not do that. New Democrats are still laughing, because they want to shut these sectors down. New Democrats run to Washington and say not to defend Canadian jobs and not to defend young people who are trying to find employment in communities like mine. They say to shut down the industries that are creating the jobs, opportunity, hope and prosperity for all Canadians through the oil sands and the oil and gas sector, which is alive and well in my community.

The people in my constituency do not go home early. There are Canadians throughout this country who do not go home early. They stay at work and continue to get things done. They are—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The hon. member for Saint-Lambert on a point of order.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to interrupt my colleague's speech, which is completely irrelevant. We are discussing Bill S-12, and he has yet to mention it in his speech. I would ask that you call him to order.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I will give the member for Peace River the recognition that he mentioned Bill S-12, but he has not spent more than about five seconds on that bill and a bunch of other things that have some indirect relevance. I will allow him to continue, but I would encourage him to begin to address at least some comments to the bill that is before the House for debate this evening.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to impugn motives on my colleagues, but anytime they hear about the oil and gas industry or farming or the forestry sector, they want to shut down debate on those issues.

That is why they tried to shut down the debate in this House earlier today. They want to go home. They do not want to talk about important things like jobs, opportunities, prosperity and hope in this country.

Incorporating by reference, the material in this bill would do exactly that. It would streamline things to ensure that there is efficiency, clarity and assurance for people who are involved in these sectors, in agriculture, the oil and gas sector and the forestry sector. These are companies, industries, small business people who depend on referencing regularly the legislation that is important to their industries.

There is a number of very important issues that are being brought forward in this bill that are entirely important with regard to these industries.

Mr. Speaker, you are an expert in this House, you have been in this place for some time and you know that this is a modern technique of incorporating by reference through regulation.

The Senate was criticized by my colleagues earlier, but I can assure the hon. members opposite that even the Senate did not shut down to go home early. It got its work done and sent us a bill, an important bill. The senators heard evidence at their committee hearings, and we will see if these members on the opposite side stick around long enough to hear witnesses on this side.

What we do hear from the witnesses the Senate heard is that it is important to move forward on this legislation. For the first time, Bill S-12 would impose a regulation requirement, a positive obligation on regulators to ensure that the reference is accessible to those people who are being regulated.

That answers the question that some of the members opposite were wondering about. They had not read the legislation, clearly. I want to assure the members opposite that there is a positive obligation on the regulators to ensure that the information is available to those who are being regulated. If it is not, then the person who is being regulated is not responsible. That is the first time in Canadian legislation that that has in fact happened.

There is a number of things that Bill S-12 would do. One of the things it would do is reduce unnecessary duplication and costs within the federal government and on some of our other levels of government, as well as, more importantly, on small business.

This is one of the things I heard about regularly as I served as a commissioner on the red tape reduction commission. We travelled from coast to coast. I hear the hon. members on the opposite side heckling again. Anytime they hear about the reduction of red tape, they are opposed to that. We know that. They have made that clear. That is why they have lost all the elections my colleague referenced earlier.

What we heard from small business owners, those people who create jobs, those who are the drivers of our economy in this nation, is “We need less duplication; we need more clarity; we need the regulations that we are required to follow to be user-friendly.” That is exactly what this bill would do.

My colleagues from the opposite side also referenced the scary notion that by incorporating our work with other jurisdictions, somehow that was going to be the end of the world.

I am a big federalist. I believe we have great provinces and territories from coast to coast. I am different from the leader of the Liberal Party, who comes to Alberta and basically says Albertans are some kind of nasty folks, and the Leader of the Opposition, who we hear continually criticizing the industries in my province.

I recognize that is not the view of my colleagues in the opposition parties. However, here on this side of the House, on the Conservative benches, we believe that every province and every territory is an important part of this country, and we trust them all. We believe we can incorporate by reference.

I was talking to John today. He is a hard-working Canadian. He is still working tonight. John Holtby was talking to me about the necessity to incorporate by reference beekeeping regulations.

He believes there needs to be more clarity when it comes to the freedom of individuals to have bee-keeping operations in communities across the country in a more homogenous way. This was something I heard directly from a constituent. He is a hard-working Canadian still working tonight and this is something he talked about.

While the opposition members are opposed to coordinating with our provinces, I am a strong federalist and I strongly trust provinces and territories across the country. I do not think they are somehow going to do something nasty to the federal government. Therefore, it is important we work together in a collaborative fashion to ensure we streamline things, provide more clarity to business owners, reduce duplication and ensure that when people are being regulated that, first and foremost, they can find those regulations, which is established in this bill, and that they be clear. That is what is established in this bill. It is something that is great news to all Canadians, specifically small business owners and people who work in other levels of government across our great nation.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have one question on the substance of Bill S-12, which is a bill to amend the Statutory Instruments Act to deal with ambulatory references and the like.

One of the things that has caused me concern, and I would like his comment on, is whether the term “accessible” should be defined.

The bill imposes an obligation, as the member knows, on regulation-making authorities to ensure that certain documents that are incorporated by reference are accessible. However, the bill does not have a definition of “accessible”. Does my colleague think it needs to be defined so we could know what it means?

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that this would be the normal meaning under the law. It is a regular legal term. It is something that is defined and has been defined throughout years of history. It is clear to those of us on this side of the House that things need to be accessible not only to bureaucrats and people with a law degree, but also to people who run small businesses. That is the definition we believe will be established throughout it.

If the hon. member has suggestions as to how we can ensure there be a more streamlined approach to regulations across the country to ensure they are accessible to small businesses, that would be welcome news on this side. So often what we hear from the opposite side is how they can become more convoluted and how we can reduce the ability of small businesses to move forward.

I am a strong proponent of ensuring that there be accessibility for small business owners, specifically as it relates to regulations. Those people who are regulated need to have access to those regulations and understand them clearly.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Peace River eventually got around Bill S-12. However, I would like to ask him a question.

I am thinking about small business as well in the context of this act. Some commentators have noted that will be difficult for people who are affected by regulations to stay on top of those regulations with the ease with which things can be incorporated by reference. There will be less scrutiny and, while things may be in legislation described as “accessible”, we have seen the Conservative government take labels off cans and say that they are now accessible on a website. We have already seen that under Bill C-38 pharmaceutical drugs will be maintained on a list as opposed to posted in the Canada Gazette for full regulation.

Is the member not just a little troubled that some of the people in business with whom he empathizes, and rightly so, could find themselves on the wrong side of a regulation about which they had much less notice because of Bill S-12?

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-12 does exactly the opposite of what the member describes. In fact, the referencing of regulation happens as a normal practice within much legislation. It is a modern practice. It has been going on for years and years and it has become the regular practice.

What has not been codified within legislation is that it be accessible to those people who are regulated. Now there will be a requirement to do exactly what the hon. member is looking for, which is first and foremost, and that it be understandable so it not be written in some format that is foreign to those people who are being regulated.

I can assure members that in this bill we go to great lengths to ensure those issues that the hon. member brings to the attention of the House as they relate to small business and those people being regulated.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as we know, Canada is a trading nation. In Canada, we have shipping companies and exporters.

One of the things that has been brought up is the question of whether international rules or standards can be used through incorporation through reference. Obviously, the answer from the speech we heard is that yes, it can. In this case, it will actually help to open up new markets for Canada's exporters.

I would like to hear, again with the highest of standards, the member's thoughts on how important it is to have a set of rules that everyone can compete by and work by safely.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that I got some criticism from the opposition members for talking about sectors in my constituency that depend on exports. We are talking about forestry, oil and gas and those industries that continue to export.

I have spoken to a number of Canadians who are concerned about these very things. John, Zach, Sean, Leigh, Semhar and Christine all told me that these types of things need to be addressed, and this legislation does just that.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am excited about this bill and excited about this piece of legislation. I am also excited to be batting cleanup tonight after tremendous speeches from my colleague from Fort McMurray—Athabasca, my colleague from Peace River and of course the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. I found their speeches compelling, invigorating, intense, effective and in-depth.

I was a former history teacher, and we have heard some great speeches, some remarkable addresses. I think of Lincoln's Gettysburg address, Roosevelt's “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, JFK's “ask not what your country can do for you” speech and Churchill's call to fight on the beaches and in the hills. Of course, I also think of our own Prime Minister and his historic apology to the first nations of Canada.

I am not saying that the speeches we heard were up to that standard, but I do think they were very memorable speeches that we can refer to in later years, because this bill is important to the future of this country. It is important to regulation.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage said a lady named Semhar called him and encouraged him to get in and speak, but she called me as well and said, “This is your last chance to speak on this bill. You have to get in there.” Fortunately, I was able to capture the last spot to speak on this riveting piece of legislation, so I want to thank Semhar for her encouragement to come here to speak.

I also had a call from a lawyer named Adam Church. He told me that he knew I was a teacher and might not be that familiar with this type of legislation, but he said this is going to be important. It is going to put Canada on the leading edge of regulatory processes in the world. Canada once again is going to be number one because of this legislation.

I am proud to come here and speak about this bill. I would like to thank our colleagues on the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for their thoughtful consideration of this bill and for reporting it to the House without amendment.

As the Senate committee heard during the consideration of Bill S-12, incorporation by reference has already become an important component of modern regulation. The witnesses the Senate committee heard from were supportive of the use of incorporation by reference, notably in its ambulatory form, as a way to achieve effective and responsive regulation in a fiscally responsible manner.

Our government always tries to be fiscally responsible in making sure Canada continues to be one of the best job producers in the G8. Bill S-12 is an important step toward this in many important ways. Enactment of this legislation will clarify when ambulatory incorporation by reference can be used. The bill responds to one of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations' most important concerns by confirming the basis for the use of this technique.

As well, Bill S-12 will impose for the first time in federal legislation an obligation on regulation-makers to ensure the material that the regulations incorporate by reference is accessible. We heard the colleague across the way ask for a definition of this accessibility. This is very important for the future of this nation. It is very important that we have effective regulation-making and it is very important that it be accessible.

This bill would provide regulated communities with the assurance that such material will be available to them with a reasonable—I repeat, reasonable—amount of effort on their part, cutting regulation and cutting red tape. It will at the same time provide regulators with the necessary flexibility to respond to the many types and sources of material that may be incorporated.

The approach to accessibility in Bill S-12 avoids any unnecessary duplication or costs by recognizing that much of the material that is incorporated by reference is already accessible, without the regulation-maker needing to take further steps in many cases.

Cutting red tape, reducing the regulations and reducing duplication makes things easier, quicker and more effective. For example, federal regulations often incorporate by reference provincial or territorial legislation in order to facilitate intergovernmental co-operation. Provincial and territorial legislation is already widely accessible through the Internet, and no further steps would be needed on the part of the federal regulators. To require further action would result in unnecessary costs.

Using modern technology and the Internet to help us incorporate what already exists at the provincial level is going to reduce the costs to the federal government and make things more efficient. This bill is about efficiency, about reducing red tape and about making things work more quickly and more effectively.

Similarly, standards produced by organizations operating under the auspices of the Canadian Standards Council are readily accessible from the expert bodies that write them. The government takes seriously the obligation to ensure that this material is accessible and has for that reason proposed to enshrine that obligation in this proposed legislation.

Bill S-12 also introduces provisions that make sure that a regulated person could not be subject to penalties or other sanctions in the event that the incorporated material were not accessible. It provides protection for Canadians.

As the Minister of Justice highlighted in his remarks before the Senate committee, this is a positive and important step forward. Both the obligation relating to accessibility and the corresponding protective provisions respond to concerns of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations.

It is also important for us to recognize that the mandate of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations will not be altered as a result of Bill S-12. As is the case now, the joint committee will continue to be able to review and scrutinize the manner in which incorporation by reference is used, to ensure that it falls within the scope and authority conferred by this act or a particular act that is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada.

There were concerns from the opposition side that somehow we would be losing our effective ability to effect regulations later on as the Government of Canada. This protects that. Scrutiny of Regulations still had jurisdiction over these regulations.

After years of experience with federal regulations using the technique of incorporation by reference, we know that regulators will frequently rely on both international and national standards to achieve the regulatory objectives. The Senate committee heard witnesses from the Standards Council of Canada. Ensuring that regulators can have immediate access to the best technology and the best thinking will offer the best protection for the health and safety of Canadians. Once again, we are making sure that Canadians are protected, red tape is cut, but the health and safety of Canadians is always paramount. These witnesses provided testimony that many hundreds of standards are already incorporated by the reference and that access to these standards goes a long way to ensuring that our international obligations are met. Use of this technique to incorporate international and national standards ensures that our obligations related to avoiding technical barriers to trade are satisfied, that unnecessary duplication is avoided and that regulatory alignment is promoted.

Indeed, that successful experience to date in using these materials in federal regulations would also inform the future guidance on the use of this technique.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Indeed, the member's time is up. He will have two and a half minutes when the debate resumes in the future.