I was referring to the priest.
The regulatory process can be very onerous at times, but democracy has a price. All of us would like everything to be democratic, but we would rather not pay for that. Unfortunately, human beings will be human beings, Mr. Speaker. I know from your silence that you agree. I am sure my remarks are accurate, and I can assure you I have the best intentions. Even the Prime Minister would not stand up to contradict me. And the hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel will not do so either, because they know I am right. These people know that governing a country is important, and that the implications are enormous. Sometimes, when we make miserly economies, we run the risk of stalling the economy and doing more harm than good.
I let the hon. member across throw me off track, but I will now go on. I was commenting on a few clauses in the bill. The hon. member for Fundy-Royal has praised incorporation by reference.
It is not that simple. Clause 19 or 20 of the bill, I believe, deals with incorporation by reference. The hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel will no doubt agree that this procedure can be interesting when you need to incorporate things like automobile standards. Instead of putting them in regulations, it is more simple to say that we accept the standards set in such and such a book of specifications by General Motors on such and such a date. That is fine, but incorporation by reference can also have unwanted consequences.
You will recall an incorporation by reference involving the number 6803, which states that calculating pension income for someone who has worked in the U.S. for some years and might be entitled to a pension requires reference to American Government Order no. 6803 to determine the amount of pension. Order 6803, however, may be cost of living indexed, and we who have referred to it, to an authority outside of Canada, attempt to comply because we are not the ones to decide, a foreign government is.
It might have been wise to state, and I am in agreement with the government on this, that when there is incorporation by reference, this may include a foreign government such as the U.S. Government. This is not done, however, and so we find ourselves before the courts, who will tell us that it is unacceptable for a regulation passed in the United States to be applied by reference to Canadians.
There will also be another problem. Some will say that the regulation was adopted in English only in the United States. Does that not contravene section 133 of Canada's Constitution? This is going to be another problem. The intent was to lower the standards,
and then we will be forced to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court from 9 to 27 overnight.
So you see, in an effort to make savings, we are going to find ourselves with additional expenditures. Thus, although we start out with good intentions, when laws are badly written, we end up with legal monsters of a sort. It does not look like anything. We cannot make head or tail of it. We do not know what it is. After all, it probably does not amount to much. This could, however, reward and benefit friends of the party, who, thanks to vague and ambiguous documents, could end up getting some kind of norm applying only to them.
One of my constituents, for whom I have the greatest respect, told me he had heard that the post office in Chambly was for sale. It could have been. When you do not need a post office any longer, you sell it. He was interested in bidding for it. So, I called Canada Post to ask if the post office was for sale. I was told that, no, they had not decided to sell it. So I ask for an assurance that if ever it is put up for sale there will be a public call for tenders. They replied: "Oh, no, Mr. Lebel, we cannot give you that assurance". If they wanted to, the post office could even be given away. They are not under any obligation to follow the regulations of the House of Commons, to call for tenders, etc. If they want, they can give it away even if people are willing to pay a good price for that post office.
The only rule Canada Post Corporation has to abide by is that it must come before the House of Commons every year to say it is making profits. As long as there are profits, nobody complains. That is what I was told and I know these people are acting in good faith. They will not give the post office away. However, I know that legally they could do so because they do not come under the control of the House of Commons.
All we are doing here is giving them some appropriations when they are in the red. However, we do not ask them anything when they are making money. In this way, it is always the taxpayer who pays.
What I just said pertains to incorporation by reference. There is another aspect to this bill. It also deals with the publication of bills and regulations. The rules are changed by saying: "The Governor in Council may, by regulation, exempt from the application of the regulatory process a regulation or class of regulations that was prescribed under- the- Act as exempt from examination, registration or publication under that Act immediately before its repeal". There was none. There were not many, but there were still a few.
It says a regulation may be published, but also that it may not be published. No one can be convicted on the basis of the publication of that regulation, if means had not been taken to make it known appropriately. But this provision is rather vague. It says that people should know about a regulation even though it was not published. They should have realized that; they are smarter than that. There is no strict rule. That is the bill's greatest flaw.
I said at the beginning of my speech that the hon. member for Fundy-Royal should not have been so full of praise; I wonder if he did read the bill.
The Prime Minister is still sitting; he is not rising to his feet because he knows I am right. He will not rise. The leader of the opposition agrees with me on this. The hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel will not rise either for the same reason. As for the Prime Minister, he is not rising because he agrees with me and will probably send you back to the drawing board since, as you know, this kind of wording makes it impossible to save money.
Mention is made of defence mechanisms. "No person may be convicted of an offence or subjected to a penalty for a contravention of a regulation". The hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel, who is responsible for international affairs, should listen. He should pay attention to clause 11. The Prime Minister may even step in at this time. Listen to this: "No person may be convicted of an offence or subjected to a penalty for a contravention of a regulation that was not published in accordance with section 10 on or before the date of the alleged contravention".
We are reasonable people. We do not want to convict someone who committed an offence unwittingly, someone who did not comply with unpublished regulations, regulations hidden in the minister's office. Fortunately not in the office of the hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel.
However, it says here that this person can be convicted of an offence if it is proved that, on or before the date of the alleged contravention, the person had actual notice of the substance of the regulation or reasonable steps had been taken to bring its substance to the notice of persons likely to be affected by it.
Again, what constitutes reasonable steps? Whatever seems reasonable to us invariably seems unreasonable to them. I guess the opposite is also true: What is reasonable to them can seem unreasonable to us. How can an agreement be reached then, if not through a tribunal, which will have the unenviable task of determining what is reasonable and what is not? I say to the Minister for International Cooperation that this is what I call poorly designed legislation. And I know that his department would not go for this kind of an enactment. He could not show up in Europe with something like this; they would send him packing, and I know he can do better than that.
I must tell the minister that we, the humble people living in Canada, do not find it easy to submit to such legislative imperatives. It is not easy, especially when we are told that, from now on, the regulations will be hidden and will be administered in such a
way that the taxpayer will not even know what is happening. It is their friends who will benefit. It reminds me of what family trusts did with $2 billion and was discovered two or three years after the fact.
In any case, I can tell you that my father did not benefit from these $2 billion. Look elsewhere, but not in our house.
There is something wrong in all this, and yet it is still going on. And this is nothing, just think of Bill C-62. I wonder if we are not having the same problem with Bill C-64, or Bill C-25 as it is now called, as we did with Bill C-62 regarding the standards of practice, since what is not prohibited in a statutory instrument is permitted.
So, there was a general outcry. The media were quick to react, saying that this was not possible, that it was impossible to pass a measure such as Bill C-62. The minister backed off. He could no longer go ahead. He was knocked out, if I can put it that way.
I wonder if, with Bill C-84, we are now once again facing the harmful effects of Bill C-62, but in an even more insidious way. This would really be dangerous. We would be missing an opportunity to reduce costs and all that, setting absolutely unbelievable precedents and leaving the door wide open to astronomical legal costs to correct these situations through the courts.
Therefore, the Bloc Quebecois will vote against this bill. We could not vote in favour of it, despite the fact that initially I detected some rather interesting ideas in it, but there are too few good ones as opposed to bad ones.
My mother, who is not as young as she used to be, was very well brought up. She did not want us to use certain words. One day, I got a nail through a foot and the wound looked real bad; my mother, not wanting to call a spade a spade, said that the wound was full of rust and bad stuff. Well, this is it: your bill is full of rust and bad stuff. You should amend it and put forward something palatable, reasonable and transparent. I am sure that this time the Prime Minister, even at this late hour, will jump up and applaud his ministers' initiative.