It answers my question. I guess I'll continue, though, on my point with respect to enforceability.
Again, the more we hear about this, I don't see how, if someone is charged, this won't be a massive fight and unnecessarily clog up the court system. We already know it's flawed. I appreciate the opposition saying that we can just fix it later. That's what the point of this is, and we're now so far down this road.
I apologize if it was a rhetorical question. I genuinely am looking for an answer to what we are doing. If the opposition is so keen on passing a flawed piece of legislation, which it is known cannot be enforced or won't be enforced because of the legal complexities and the hope from Mr. Albas that everyone will be good—they promise, probably, maybe....
From the industry we hear that this is going to lead to uncertainty, uncertainty in terms of the regulations and uncertainty in terms of enforcement. What are we hoping to achieve here with this bill? If it's uncertain as to its goals, if it's uncertain as to its enforcement, what's the goal? Why are we rushing this unnecessarily?
I appreciate Ms. Collins saying that we could have proposed amendments. We look at this and see it as a flawed piece of legislation. I don't know if I appreciate Mr. Albas's point to just fix it months down the road when we deal with this, and “Mr. Bittle, you march down to speak to Jonathan Wilkinson and tell him to fix the mess that this committee has created.” I don't think that's the role of a parliamentary secretary, but perhaps it will be. Should this bill pass, I'll probably have to go back and report that there is a mess that may need to be cleaned up.
Again, with legislation at a standstill in the House of Commons [Technical difficulty—Editor].
No one has answered the enforceability question. I'd be happy to hear from Mr. Albas or Ms. Collins. I hope there's a better answer than that the government can bring amendments months down the road once we've let the horse out of the barn. I'm sorry if that's an agriculture reference, Mr. Albas, in an environment committee meeting.
This is fundamental. People's jobs are on the line here. That's an argument I've heard from Mr. Albas in the House of Commons before on different pieces of legislation. He has been impassioned about that. It seems to be absent here. Again, to get that political win for reasons, I guess.... It's truly bizarre where we are at this moment.
I'm disappointed I wasn't able to participate in earlier debate on this bill, but I'm really disappointed that we were not given the opportunity to hit pause on this, knowing what this committee heard, knowing what we heard from officials. Again, everyone wants to do better on plastics, including, I'm sure, the industry, but to subject them to this, to subject the court system to this, to create that level of uncertainty.... Who is this fair to?
It's not going to lead to an improvement. I'm sure it's a win for the householder, and that's great, but when the rubber meets the road, I'm sure we can tell our constituents that we had this political win, but it's not a win for the environment. It's not a win for the justice system. It's just a bill. It's just a piece of paper. What's the point? It's a potentially dangerous piece of paper if it's going to cost jobs at the expense of not being enforceable.
My mind is blown here at this committee. Again, I appreciate everyone's genuineness of wanting to improve things, but at what cost? What's the cost of the harm that this bill may potentially bring? I don't think that question has been answered by anyone.
Again, it's hurry up and pass it. Minister Wilkinson, please fix it later. We won't let you pass it through the House of Commons, but we want you to fix it later and we'll blame you for not fixing it. We'll blame you for not enforcing it properly, even though officials have raised red flags about it.
I look forward to the questions in question period, should this bill pass down the road. Not getting into our time machine here, but the ghost of question period future may be here to say, “Why isn't the government enforcing this legislation passed by Parliament that doesn't allow for enforcement?” I'm looking forward to that one. That one's going to be glorious when it comes. I see Mr. Albas nodding. I look forward to him leading that question in question period.
These issues have been raised. It worries me that there isn't a concern from the opposition on this. Again, if it's confusing, if it's unenforceable then what have we accomplished? I hope your householders are great and this fits well onto the front page in terms of what everyone wants to see, because the harm may be real.