Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate Mr. Champoux's intervention and his opinions.
One of the things that he got from Mr. Ripley was the position that, yes, there are legal opinions. The second level they get, which they contract out, is legal opinions via the CRTC paying these people for those legal opinions.
As we've heard, this will be challenged in court for those people who, as you say and as I believe, are in disastrous need of support for moving on. This particular legislation, however, is going to keep that from happening because legal opinions are legal opinions, and there will be legal opinions on all sides.
I've been in elected positions where we would try with legal opinions to make legislation. At the municipal level, you do that, and you think that you've created the best, legally right legislation. Then you find out quickly that you haven't, but at a municipal level, you can change that legislation very quickly. You can amend it at the next meeting, or you can change the legislation at the municipal level.
I've been on provincial appointed boards—a health board—and we had lots of provincial lawyers, lots of them, but guess what? When somebody wants to challenge it, there are lawyers that they can buy for any legal opinion they want. When you put legislation in like we're going to, without as many safeguards as you can get, it's going to get challenged.
This amendment is attempting to add another layer of that legal opinion protection. That's what this is about, because the lawyers that they have, in house and contracted, are paid for by the government and the CRTC under their mandate, so their voice is for them. The outside legal voices will have differences of opinions. When you make a law federally—it's been 30 years since this one was touched—you don't change it next week, you don't change it next month and you can't fix it for many years, sometimes decades. You can do that at the municipal level. It's harder at the provincial level, and drastically difficult at the federal level.
These are legal opinions, both in house and contracted. With this legislation, they will be challenged because of problems with this legislation. It's going to tie this thing up in court. That's why you try, as with this amendment, to bring as much protection to decisions that are made as possible because those decisions, as we know, are made behind closed doors. There is no transparency, and there are no notes.
That's a field that's wide open for lawyers to get into—it really is. Yes, I wandered through law school one time and then came to my senses and said, no, I don't want to be doing this.
This type of thing makes it just a wide-open door for other legal opinions—it really does. When I say that word, “opinions”, that's what they are. They are in-house and contracted opinions for those who are paying their bills. For those on the outside, they will contract looking for opinions to support them, and that's why this will be tied up in court and delayed longer.
With this amendment, this is on a positive side trying to make it in a better place before it hits those opposition lawyers that will be there. This gives them more due cause to say, “This is grounds to challenge it.” If we see more transparency, if we see more legal opinions there will be fewer lawyers who want to challenge this because it's narrowed the field for more legal opinions to challenge it.
That's what this amendment is about. It's trying to protect this so that the legislation can move on and be enacted and protect those people in it. It protects the CRTC and their decisions. It adds another layer of validity to what they're doing. The more you leave it open, the more you leave it open for challenges, and if you don't understand how the legal field works, this is one that they're going to be able to see is more open to challenge without that extra layer.
Mr. Champoux, you want to get this done. People are waiting for it. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to put something in that more guarantees it is likely they'll get it, even a little slower, than its being challenged, with it more wide open for legal challenges to happen. They're all opinions until a judge makes a final ruling or a panel of judges makes a ruling. This is how the legal practice works. They all have opinions and they are people who are paid for those opinions. That's who they work for, the people who pay them, just like the ones in house work for the CRTC and the contracted ones.
I believe it's a good piece. Yes, it's going to slow the process down a bit, but it narrows the field for legal challenges by doing it, so we can get through this. It's a challenging piece of legislation. It could have been done much more quickly the other way, with fewer problems, if the amendment hadn't been made, but it's going to go forward. However, this is an amendment that could have helped.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.