It's section 155.
After two specific sections it includes a clause that is exactly equivalent to the one before us today--that is, generally for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this act.
I was grateful to Mr. Lee for bringing this issue to our attention and specifically mentioning that this is criminal law legislation so we must be careful with regulations. I looked in other criminal law legislation, and I think we can agree that the Youth Criminal Justice Act is criminal law legislation.
I also want to commend Mr. Lee for having spent 22 years on the scrutiny of regulations committee and still having the brain cells to rub together to raise this issue. But I also want to point out that thanks to his efforts and the efforts of that committee, every regulation that does get promulgated under such authority as we are dealing with today is scrutinized to ensure that it is not ultra vires or unconstitutional in any fashion. That is the role of the scrutiny of regulations committee.
I am not asking that we search the whole history of regulations to see if one got through okay, but whether anyone knows of any regulation under section 155 of the Youth Criminal Justice Act that is unconstitutional and somehow escaped Mr. Lee's eagle eyes and those of his colleagues on the scrutiny of regulations committee. I have such confidence in Mr. Lee that I'm willing to stake money on the fact that there is no regulation under the Youth Criminal Justice Act that is unconstitutional and escaped the committee's justified scrutiny.
I also wish to refer to one other example in the way of criminal law jurisdiction, and that is the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which I hope we will all agree is a criminal law statute. Section 55 of that act says that the Governor in Council may make regulations for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this act; then it goes on to make 25 specific references, without limiting or restricting the generality of that.
Again it has substantially the same wording. It seems to me completely proper to include that, because we cannot predict every contingency. We try, but we cannot, in the end, being human, predict every contingency. Therefore these general clauses have been used for many years, to my knowledge. I would be willing to bet some of them were even in the legislation passed under the former Liberal government and accepted by them. We do rely on the scrutiny of regulations committee to ensure the constitutionality.