Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
I was just in the process of going over the proposed amendments. I want to briefly address the amendment on applying GST, or not apply it, to crypto currency mining.
It was an interesting discussion we had in respect to the witness testimony we heard. I am satisfied that the department understands the problems that have been raised and that the intention is to try to create a fair tax policy in this regard while being sensitive to the concerns that have been raised.
It sounds to me as though the dispute is over whether or not the legislation is clear enough. It seems to me as though it's worth giving this particular legislation a shot. I wasn't convinced by the arguments around the table that the legislation is obviously not clear enough, and it does seem to me that the department has a relatively clear intention in terms of how it believes the legislation should be implemented. I think that this is the kind of thing that can be evaluated over time. I'd be open to perhaps revisiting this question in the future, but for the moment I'm satisfied with the legislation in its present form.
I also want to talk briefly about the interswitching proposal. As I understand it, no amendments were proposed on that, but we have had a good discussion here.
I represent Transcona. There are a lot of folks who work for the railway. I think there are some real concerns, which I am not as prepared to dismiss as the agricultural lobby on the Hill is, about employment in Canada and business essentially being handed off to American railways. The interswitching proposal is one that I find hard to support. I will be requesting a recorded vote on clause 443, which is the first of the interswitching clauses.
If that clause passes anyway, then for the sake of efficiency, I won't request a recorded vote on the subsequent clauses. If you could take note of that, Mr. Chair, and consider me to have already requested that vote, that would be great. If we are doing it late in the night, I might miss the opportunity. I would hate to think so. I will do my best to be vigilant. That's why I want to lay that marker down now and inform you, Mr. Chair, that this is my intention. Any kind reminders, in the event that I do miss it, are certainly welcome.
Finally, I want to go through some of the amendments on the air passenger bill of rights.
Actually, I think a substantial amount of the package is dedicated to this. I would be remiss if I didn't commend my colleague Taylor Bachrach for all the work he's done on the air passenger rights question generally as well as in preparing these amendments. I regret that Mr. Bachrach isn't here to present them himself. He wanted to be. He made efforts to be here on Thursday. Members of the committee will know that he was here. Had we not been subjected to a filibuster, we very likely would have considered those amendments in the time that he made available to be here. It has been a very unpredictable process around this table, including the eleventh-hour agreement to have any time at all to discuss amendments. Unfortunately, we weren't prepared to have Mr. Bachrach here to do that.
Any errors or omissions in the presentation of the amendments are my own. They are not his. I apologize in advance if I've not quite captured the intention or the spirit of those amendments.
The amendment he has proposed to clause 445 would put some language back in to protect the right of the complainant to make their own complaints in addition to any proactive requirements for action by the agency. There's some concern here that it is left to the agency's discretion to be the one to move forward on a complaint. We believe an individual complainant should have the opportunity to move forward on something even if the agency does not wish to. We want to make sure the customer is in the driver's seat when it comes to shepherding their complaints forward.
We have some concern about there being a secrecy provision with respect to complaints being adjudicated. We think that's appropriate in the case of mediation, but if something moves to adjudication, open court principles should apply. There should be a body of precedent that's built and that's public. That's not something the current legislation allows for.
I see that I'm getting a little bit of a nod that my time is over, and while there's more to say and there are more amendments, I am grateful to have had at least this much opportunity. I hope that next time we'll have a better process that allows for full and proper debate of these amendments, instead of this kind of rush job that we've all just been subject to.
Thank you.