The minister wants to go to the Supreme Court with that. We are in this situation because parts of previous legislation dealing with sponsorship was struck down by the Supreme Court. From my office in the Confederation Building, I can see the Supreme Court. Maybe I am prejudiced, but it seems to me that it is always leaning to the west. But I may be over-reacting.
First, the Supreme Court is in Ontario and most of the judges come from Ontario. Most of the time, when there are decisions involving Quebec, we are in the House. We have become rather suspicious when it comes to relying on the Supreme Court to interpret a piece of legislation. It is not that we are suspicious by nature, it is because we have facts. There is a lot of evidence which prove that Bill 101 was badly tampered with by the Supreme Court. But that is not what we are dealing with this morning.
For a minister to be this tentative on each and every aspect of a bill is unusual indeed. I asked my colleague, the hon. member for Chambly about this, since he sits on the committee that deals with the scrutiny of regulations and the administration of legislation. He told me that they have rarely seen an act worded the way this one is, where the minister is so afraid his act will be thrown out of court that he reserves the right to regulate each and every aspect of the issue, instead of mentioning his power to make regulations only once, as usually is the case. The word "may" is used over and over again, all over the place, regarding sponsorships, sales, the way the product should be regulated, and so on.
The minister is so concerned that he will be making regulations on just about everything. But at the same time, it has to be said that the minister is grabbing a great deal of power in an area which, in theory, is none of his concern, since this is a health issue. Again, the provinces are not even mentioned.
The minister has arranged it in such a way that he will be pulling all the strings and retaining full power through regulations. The thing is, we would like him to table his regulations in this House. We would have liked him to do so while the bill was before us, but at least he should do so very soon. In fact, we have moved an amendment to that effect.
The official opposition has acted constructively, proposing a series of regulations at the clause by clause review stage of the bill. We succeeded in having one agreed to, regarding vending machines with remote controls. We had to negotiate long and hard for this and we were quite proud of ourselves. We won this point in committee, but now, at report stage, what do we see? The words got changed around to read only vending machines with locking devices. That is what would be allowed, even in bars where customers under the age of 18 are not admitted. They want to put tobacco into the category of illegal and dangerous substances and treat it as such, requiring that it be kept under lock and key, even in places where children are not admitted.
I am running out of time. I will not go into histrionics, I will simply encourage the members across the way to do their duty as lawmakers and, unlike the hon. member from the Reform Party, not to rush into supporting a bill before getting a copy of the bill and reviewing it thoroughly, particularly clauses 31 and 53, where the presumption of innocence is reversed and the onus or burden of
proof that should be on the accused is on the victim instead of the other way around.
I will conclude on this: read your bills, as it is your duty as Liberal members, before voting for or against them.