Thank, you again, Madame Laverdière. That's a great question.
First of all, I've heard this notion about retaining flexibility as being a key rationale for doing it through regulations because we need to be flexible in situations as circumstances change, etc. It's a seductive argument, but it simply doesn't hold because the types of items that we say must be matters of law and not regulation are top-level items. These are things that are not realistically going to be affected by the weather or the political environment or the economic upheaval in this part of the world or whatever.
We are not saying it's always as a matter of law to not sell to Saudi Arabia, for example, because consensus could change. Saudi Arabia could be a beacon of human rights or something like that. What we are saying should be a matter of law is that there are certain exports that cannot proceed, period. That sort of top-level parameter, which is not process-related or procedural, but rather sets out again the hard limits of what's acceptable for Canadian arms exporters should be a matter of law and not subsequent regulations, among other reasons, because the public's and your own ability to scrutinize the content of the regulations is very limited.
The way we are headed, the bill may get royal assent without our knowing a single word of what is going to be contained in those regulations, so how can we properly assess the merits of the changes when they are not fully known?