Hansard
will disclose that this comment was made.
I feel very strongly that it is a privilege to speak in the House, on either side of the House, on the opposition side or on the government side. We all have a duty to examine legislation whether or not we have special expertise in the area under debate.
The suggestion that only westerners can debate a wheat board bill plays right into the hands of the separatists who would suggest that the only people who can debate the future of Quebec are people who live in Quebec. I reject that and I think most Canadians reject it.
What I would like to contribute to this debate is what little I can contribute to the debate. I would like to talk about the question of preambles.
As I understand it, Motion No. 1 put forward by the official opposition would establish a preamble to the bill. I am not a lawyer and many members on the other side are not lawyers, but if they would care to pick up the telephone and ask for advice, they would discover that preambles do not count for anything in legislation. Legislation begins where it states “Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts”. The legislation follows that.
I have been campaigning on my side of the House to stop government legislatures, bureaucrats, whoever writes the laws, from writing preambles. Preambles are smokescreens. Preambles are when the clauses in the legislation are not sufficiently exact. The clauses do not say and do what the government is convinced they will do.
We have the opposition suggesting that we should pass legislation which carries on a tradition that really got rolling in the 35th Parliament of smoke and mirrors through preambles.
What does it really mean if there is a preamble which states “whereas agriculture is a basic foundation stone of the Canadian economy?” What does that mean? What will it do for a judge? Does it really matter? Will it affect how the law will be interpreted? I suggest not.
It has no force on judges. My colleagues opposite can check it. In the legal profession they call it the pious hope clause. It has no binding implications for what the judge must do. The judge must read after enacts.
There has been debate about the wording accountable to farmers being in the preamble. This is where I will have to accuse my colleagues opposite of not wanting to have a rational debate.
The phrase accountable to farmers sounds noble. I know it will play very well in western Canada, but we are talking about government legislation. We are talking about setting up a federal government body. We are not setting up a provincial body. We are not setting up a farmers union. We are setting up a body that has to be responsible to the federal minister because there is no other way of doing it.