Thank you, Chair.
As I briefly mentioned to you on the break, as a member of Parliament here in this place on behalf of the Green Party of Canada, I've been subjected to special rules since Stephen Harper developed a special motion out of the PMO. Every PMO since then has insisted on telling every committee to pass said motion at the beginning of every session after every election. First, Mr. Harper created it. Then Mr. Trudeau asked every committee to just pass it automatically without thinking about it or debating it, and certainly without speaking to the members of Parliament on whom it has an immediate impact. The same thing has happened now, under the current Prime Minister, after the April election.
I need to put on the record again that what the committee passed after the election—and every committee was asked to pass an identical motion—makes a mockery of the notion that the committee is the master of its own process. When I complain to the Speaker that my rights are infringed and I raise a question of privilege on that point, the Speaker always says, “Well, the committee is the master of its own process.” The Speaker has no role over protecting my rights.
I'm not allowed to vote on my amendments and I'm not allowed to withdraw my amendments. Under the process by which we are now operating, my amendments here today are deemed moved, and I have no power or control to speak, other than to speak briefly to each amendment. If this committee had not passed the motion, it would have left me with rights at report stage in the full chamber, able to put forward amendments—substantive amendments—at report stage in the whole chamber. As it is, this is prejudicial to the rights of smaller parties and to MPs for smaller parties. It means I can't be in the House right now debating Bill C-20, because I must be here for the brief opportunity to speak to my amendments.
I'll do so now. I appreciate being able to put on the record that my protest remains in place and that this procedure by every committee needs to be examined. I don't imagine any of my friends around the table knew that in passing this motion, you were reducing the reduced rights I already have.
Now I will go to the amendment, which is critical.
Amendments to the Red Tape Reduction Act in Bill C-15 have achieved and attracted much public attention. They're fundamentally offensive to democracy across Canada and to laws that are already carried.
In the Red Tape Reduction Act amendments found under division 5 in this over 600-page omnibus budget bill, we have something that is extraordinary. It's never been introduced in any bill in this Parliament before. It's similar to changes made in Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, in that it presumes that a government can decide, in passing a law, to break other laws that are already in place. In Bill C-5, it was cabinet as a whole. The Governor in Council could decide that a project was a project of national significance.
I won't go back into Bill C-5, but Bill C-15, in this section under division 5, proposes to say that an individual cabinet member can decide at their personal discretion, without mandatory statutory guidelines or criteria, that it is in the public interest that an entity defined as a person or persons, an association or a corporation may be exempted from any law within their general sphere of jurisdiction as a minister if they decide it's in the public interest and the benefits outweigh the risks.
We were told—this committee was told—by witnesses representing the Treasury Board that these so-called regulatory sandboxes are entirely normal. They're routine. They pat us on the head and tell us there's nothing to worry about here.
I've had a very interesting adventure in learning about regulatory sandboxes, because they're hardly routine. They're not typical in Canadian law. They go back to decisions made under the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority back in 2017. They go back to the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 2016. What they're about is creating innovation opportunities for financial products, for things in the financial sector.
However, this application, as it's being put forward in Bill C-15, is far broader than innovations in financial services or financial products. As we read, we see the entities, the scope of activities and the allowance to pursue innovation in the discretion of a single minister are far broader than what's found in other countries.
In an attempt to respect what the government is trying to do here, I bring forward the first of two amendments to this section, PV-1. This is an attempt to simply ensure that in the opening statements of what the mandate is, why we're doing this and what it's all about, we confine the application of these regulatory sandboxes to “genuine innovation within the financial sector while protecting public” interest. This adheres to what we were told is routine in other countries.
A regulatory sandbox as a concept is not intended to say that you can reduce, as Mike Harris did in Ontario in his common-sense revolution in going after red tape, the protections for public water supplies, which led to the deaths in Walkerton. It can't be that broad. It should be restricted to the historical, traditional use of the term “regulatory sandbox”: to financial innovations and innovations within the financial sector.
That's PV-1.
In the interest of Canadians from coast to coast who are watching this and hoping that this isn't about to happen in an omnibus budget bill, and to all friends around the table regardless of party, please, this is a respectful amendment to respect what the government is trying to do but to restrict the scope of its application.
Thank you.