I must say that I, like my colleagues, find this pretty depressing. If I were the minister, I'd be furious that you hadn't been consulted and listened to. This idea that “we'll fix it in the regulations” is just not good enough. Tough cases make bad law. Every one of you, as Luc has said, is concerned that either you weren't consulted or were not listened to. Certainly, when you have both Ontario and B.C. asking “What are you doing?” and you're hearing stories that harmonizing with the United States means that big universities decide not to investigate things, this is very worrying.
There is something in the bill that's important about intentional release, I guess. There's probably something in the bill about our knowing where the bad stuff is and being able to track it. But other than that, in terms of what Joyce has said, I wonder whether the government should be asked to do the consultation first and then come back with government amendments to see whether or not this is workable, including taking out the level 2s and any of the important suggestions that should have been made at the consultations and should have been reflected in the bill to begin with.
David Butler-Jones himself has one of the most important phrases: “Oh, my God! We have to do something. This is something. Let's do that.” This is a “this will do” kind of bill. I feel embarrassed personally that after the briefing I had from the department I spoke in favour of this bill. It makes us all look like fools. I wrote “citizen engagement” into the job description of the Chief Public Health Officer. What happened? We haven't had one witness say this is a good bill.
I think Joyce's question about the problem we're trying to fix is very narrow. We have this big fire hose going at it, which has all these unintended consequences we didn't know about until we heard from the witnesses. The discussion paper that you find reassuring concerning the possible regulations is a good sign, but I guess I would like....
We have a dinner with the minister tonight as a committee. I don't think she'll be very happy with the way this bill is going. I'm sure it's something she had been persuaded was a no-brainer and would just go through. But now we have all of this. I think the minister has been seriously let down.
I would hope that the government would decide to do something itself. I don't think we as the opposition should be fooling around with amendments in some sort of patchwork quilt to try to fix this sow's ear. I don't think that's our job, frankly. We have some amendments about the regulations coming back and some amendments about advisory committees, but what I think we are taking from this afternoon is that it's a mess. Even the schedules are a mess.
I don't know what to say, other than that if you were consulted—