Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think much of what was brought up by Mr. Thériault is very pointed and important.
While Mr. van Koeverden has signalled a couple of the stakeholders who have made requests to appear, the Canadian Cancer Society has also reached out, as have other stakeholders I've heard from and just normal moms and dads.
I know who I'm here for. I'm here for regular, everyday, hard-working moms and dads. I frankly think that it is a slap in the face to say, “Oh, this was studied back in 2018. Things have changed, but that's fine; we don't have to look at that. Let's just put this forward,” without giving it due consideration. Is this applicable? How can we put this in? What are the concerns of industry? How have they identified and addressed some of these concerns, and does this go too far or not far enough? I think these are all questions that we should be asking ourselves as legislators, to make sure we have the best possible legislation.
If this legislation is so perfect, then why does the government have so many amendments to the government piece of this private member's bill? I think that's another important question that we should be asking ourselves here. If this private member's bill was completely flawless, we wouldn't have a pile of amendments coming from the government to change it. We would be here with a handful of amendments from opposition parties.
I think that it's an important fact that we have to take into consideration. The government isn't even happy with the full contents of this bill. If it was, it wouldn't have put forward these amendments.