Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Knowing that I'm not a member of this committee and couldn't speak until the last round, my amendment also touches on the issue of incorporation by reference.
To clarify for the record, because Mr. Lemieux seemed to think that the official opposition supports the notion of incorporation by reference, I recall very clearly a quite brilliant speech by Craig Scott in which he slaughtered the notion. It was put forward initially through Bill S-12, in early 2013. That was a bill for the Statutory Instruments Act, moving directly contrary to all of the advice that the House has ever received from the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
Moving towards this rather carte blanche is speedy and efficient, but one of the reasons we have always had the posting of draft regulations on the Canada Gazette is to allow for transparency and scrutiny. This is a move towards far less information, far less scrutiny. You know the old phrase “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Well it's going to be much harder for stakeholders in all of these different fields, whether food safety, or plant breeders' rights and farmers' information. This is happening across many areas of public policy in Canada, and in every single case it's a bad idea.
It is dangerous to the people who have to follow those regulations. They don't have any opportunity to be certain through the usual functioning of Parliament with regulations being posted on the Canada Gazette.
Given that this is the way it's moving, at least my amendment attempts to make sure that people who are impacted through regulations incorporated by reference, as this act now does, will not face a financial difficulty in accessing those regulations and will know where to look to find them.
If you go to clause 57 in the bill, at page 33, my amendment proposes to change the regulations that are incorporated by reference under proposed subsection 5.1(2). My amendment changes the word “accessible” to “available to the public free of charge on the departmental website”.
It's a very simple change. It makes sure that people who are impacted by these regulations, and many of them are your constituents I say to my Conservative friends across the way.... You don't want them to find out that they've run afoul of some law they've never heard of, and when they try to access it they don't know where to look, and then they are told they have to pay to have a look at it.
This clarifies it and protects individuals who are impacted by regulations. They may no longer have an opportunity to comment on them when they're under development because they're no longer gazetted on the Canada Gazette, but at least they should make sure they have an easy way to find out what the law is and and they can get that law without having to pay for it.
I hope you will all support this.
Thank you.