Just to review, clause 26 as amended expands the scope of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. Those duties impose a mandatory obligation on the commissioner to review every regulation and every bill developed by the government.
Currently, the Auditor General has discretion in deciding which issues related to the environment and sustainable development should be brought to the attention of the House. That discretion will be removed. Another common theme we've seen with Bill C-469 is removal of the discretion of the courts. So this discretion is now removed from the Office of the Auditor General.
Currently, lawyers with the Department of Justice examine new legislation regulations to determine their consistency with existing legislation. If this bill were to come into force, the consistency of new legislation regulations with the Environmental Bill of Rights would become part of that examination. Clause 26 would expand the scope of the commissioner's duties and assign a job to the commissioner that is already done by the Department of Justice. Therefore there would be increased redundancy.
It's disappointing to see a continued pattern that is not in the interest of the environment or Canadians, but is in the interest of special interest groups. Our government agrees that it's an important responsibility to protect the environment for the current and future generations. We also believe we have an obligation to account for social, economic, and other priorities, and the principle of sustainable development.
This has brought to the committee's attention that the NDP is the only party that has voted against the Federal Sustainable Development Act. In the House recently, they were the ones that voted against it. We now have Bill C-469 that actually changes the definition of sustainable development. All legislation was to be viewed through the prism of sustainable development. There was unanimous support from this committee and from the House as recently as a couple of years ago. That appears to be changing under Bill C-469.
We will be voting against clause 26.