Mr. Speaker, I have been hearing for several days now what members opposite are saying about this Bill C-22 and I note the interest that my speech seems to generate. Several members are getting ready to listen carefully to what I have to say. I can feel it, Mr. Speaker.
You see, members opposite are telling us, by way of an amendment, and I will read it:
This House declines to give second reading to Bill C-22, An Act respecting certain agreements concerning the redevelopment and operation of Terminals 1 and 2 at Lester B. Pearson International Airport-
and please take note of this,
-because the principle of the Bill is flawed due to the fact that it contains no provisions aimed at making the work done by lobbyists more transparent.
In other words, according to them, legislation to amend the Lobbyist Registration Act should be part of Bill C-22. I think that someone just said yes.
Mr. Speaker, if the government had dared to amend public morality legislation, such as the acts on lobbyists or conflicts of interest, without the prior consent of the House, and had introduced it as a government bill, can you imagine what the members opposite would have said?
I have worked on several occasions in the past on bills dealing with public morality. You will recall, I am sure, the bill of 1987, which came after the unanimous report of a parliamentary committee. I recall that members from all sides of the House were saying: "Finally, we will have legislation on lobbyists because we worked together and not because the government dictated it, since a public morality matter must be part of a consensus".
All right. Then had we today introduced as a government without consultation with the opposition an amendment to the Lobbyist Registration Act inside a bill for the Toronto international airport, first of all we would have likely been out of order because that would have been an omnibus bill with no binding provisions in it to join the bill together. The Reform Party member across will know that is a prerequisite. In other words, there must be a mechanism to hold those two things together. If they were inside a bill there clearly would not have been then, and so it would have been out of order.
Second, in the unlikely event that the bill would have been in order, those people across the way would have been the same ones to pooh-pooh-not to use any other words that would be unparliamentary-the efforts of the government because they would have said this is not the way to introduce a lobbyist registration bill.