I appreciate that from Mr. Wallace, and I'd be more than happy to discuss with the parliamentary secretary his having a personal meeting with any one of the officials to determine and size up for himself whether the bill is adequate or not.
I'll come back to a simple point. A decision was made by executive authority; they proposed a change by fiat. What I've asked for and what the committee is asking for is a fix to that problem.
You now have a situation in which you have a classic debate between parliamentarians and the executive authority, which is supposed to be responsible to the parliamentary body. I'm not going to go through a histrionic exercise; the reality is that what we're dealing with here, Mr. Wallace, is very much a classic example of Parliament—not the cabinet, not Mr. Lake's boss—being supreme.
Today we are looking at a remedy to a problem created by your Minister of Industry, and we have what we believe is the perfect solution, endorsed in principle already at second reading by the democratically elected representatives of the Canadian public. If the executive and cabinet ministers don't like that, tough beans; the reality is that the power rests with members of Parliament like you and me. We may agree and we may disagree. You and I have disagreed on private members' bills that I've brought before us, and we almost caused an election on it.
At this stage, if we want to continue debating for the next 15 minutes, then we'll agree to disagree. My interest here, Mr. Chairman, is to make it abundantly clear that when it comes to the supremacy of parliamentarians, I will always fight for that right, regardless of what party they may be from. As the member obviously knows, my own track record and history on many of these issues is that I don't necessarily always follow my party. I'd like to see that kind of leadership from some of the members on your side.
Thank you, Chair.