Evidence of meeting #52 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I agree with that challenge.
We'll propose a fresh amendment to amend section 7 of the statute, which currently is not part of the bill.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the ruling is that we couldn't propose to amend something that isn't the subject of the bill. Now I'm proposing we amend the bill to include section 7 as part of the bill.
NDP
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
He had to deal with the bill as it currently sat at that time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Once again, just for clarification, the only way to move forward on this is to challenge the chair on my ruling, if you still want to have that included.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
I think what we're going to end up with, Mr. Chair, is a situation where, because of an interpretation of the rules for amending statutes, we're making inconsistent amendments to the statutes, which seems to me to be a perverse kind of result.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Mr. Chair, let's situate ourselves as to where we are.
There was a ruling that was accepted just seconds ago. I think it's pretty clear that there are no further amendments that can be made. You can put forward other amendments but you can't reintroduce an amendment that has already been defeated. I think the option is for the government to come back with a piece to clean up the legislation. That's been done in the past. No one is going to be shocked that this kind of thing has happened. We would carry on and pass this bill, and be it through scrutiny of regulations, or some other method within our process this could be addressed. But I don't see how we can go back to something that's already been ruled out of order as we are sitting here right now as we go through the bill. It's just not the way we do things.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Mr. Chair, I think we need to hear from the officials on the impact of having this inconsistent definition in the statute.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, Department of the Environment
I take it we're only talking about the proposed amendment to paragraph 7(1)(b) of the act. I think the view of the government is that this would be, if I could put it in colloquial terms, nice to have, but not necessary to have. The key scope amendments were the two to clauses 13 to 14, which would clarify that the prohibition in the IRIA would address those waters not addressed by the prohibition in the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act. The goal is to have two separate consistent prohibitions without any overlap because otherwise you have statutes that overlap one another. That was the purpose of those two.
This third amendment, as I said earlier, would make the entire definitional regime more coherent. It's something that if we were drafting from scratch I think government officials would recommend. I think the earlier two amendments can stand on their own without this amendment.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
On that basis, Mr. Chair, I would withdraw the third amendment.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
It's already been defeated, so we're good.
I'm going to move forward then and call clause 15.
(Clause 15 agreed to)
Shall the short title carry?
Conservative