Thank you very much. I will give a brief presentation.
Bill C-30 amends the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act. I will refer to it as the MVFCSA, because it's too long to keep going with that title.
The Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act is a federal act that was adopted by Parliament in 1982, but it was never proclaimed. Instead, there was a voluntary regime for the industry to meet fuel consumption standards for vehicles sold in Canada. I thought it was important to clarify that it's federal legislation that was adopted by Parliament in 1982 but it was never proclaimed.
I will go through the amendments in numerical order. There are five sections that are being amended, so I'll go quickly through them.
Section 3, as amended, is the regulatory authority section. The amendments would modernize the regulatory authority of the legislation. There is currently authority to make regulations under the act. What we're doing here is adding a further authority, or a clarification, that addresses the use of a method to establish fuel consumption standards under the act. As I said, right now there is authority to set regulations; we just wanted to clarify that through the regulatory authority you could set the standards through a formula through regulations.
Section 5 is being amended. It's about the coming into force of the regulations. The proposed amendments would repeal section 5 in order to remove the minimum timeframe of 24 months plus one day between the publication of the regulations in Canada Gazette , part II, and the coming into force of new regulations in the event of industry objections to the regulations. With this amendment, the government would have increased flexibility to introduce regulations, as appropriate.
The current act provides that if you have regulations published in Canada Gazette , part II, they cannot come into force for 24 months plus one day if there's an objection by the industry. So the amendment would provide flexibility by removing that provision. If you go 23 months or 22 months, your regulation could come into force within a timeframe that you deem appropriate.
Section 24 is being amended. This is the search power provision. The amendment would modernize the current search power of the MVFCSA by requiring an inspector who does not have the consent of the owner of a place to obtain a search warrant before entering a dwelling place. It also modernizes the search power provisions by indicating that an inspector can use a computer system at the place, or can reproduce material that can be printed out, or can use copying equipment. As I said, the act was adopted in 1982. At that time, there were not the computer systems that we have right now. So this is simply to modernize these types of provisions.
The amendments would also modernize the language of the provisions to reflect current drafting practices.
Subsection 27(2) is amended. The amendment removes the current reference in the MVFCSA to the use of information obtained under this act in criminal proceedings under another act of Parliament. Again, this is to modernize the legal drafting of such a provision, since the act is 20-some years old.
Finally, the amendments propose to amend the coming-into-force provision of the act. As it is right now, the act comes into force by way of proclamation. The current drafting proceedings provide that acts come into force by order in council, not by proclamation. It's a matter of modernizing the way in which legislation is drafted.
So these are the five provisions that are amended under Bill C-30 to amend the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act.
Thank you.