Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against the motion.
My remarks will be quite brief. The hon. parliamentary secretary has said quite a bit about some of the reasons why this motion should be defeated.
I was very conscious of ensuring that the rights of the provinces were looked after when this legislation came into the House. I looked quite closely at this clause to ensure that the rights of the provinces were not being infringed upon. I reviewed the transcripts from when provincial officials were before the committee to see what they had to say about this clause and about the possibility of any infringements. I placed phone calls to provincial officials to ask them if they were concerned about this. In every case they said they were not.
I believe they used their provincial jurisdiction and delegated their authority to the federal minister in this case because they were confident they could have that authority back at any time. They do have the protection of the Constitution in this matter.
There are many problems with this bill and there are some good things about it, to be fair, as well. I do not believe that this clause that the Bloc Quebecois is concerned about is one of the problems. There are many other things that we can be greatly concerned about, but this is not one that we need to worry about.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that we will be speaking later on about some of the problems with this bill. At the end of the day, however, you will find we support this bill, but at this moment we will be speaking against and voting against the motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois.