Mr. Speaker, being the last to speak on Bill S-4, I am not going to go through the bill in any detail, which will be good news for everybody.
The bill is long overdue. It will be welcomed across the country and throughout the world.
It was ironic, however, when I was reading the very last of my notes. This is a little humour here. It is talking about the failure to file information with the Minister of Transport regarding oil shipments resulting in a summary conviction of $100 for each day of default. I know there are members who have paid that much of a fine for speeding. I thought that portion of the bill was a little lax. It could have been more. However, this is a good bill.
When the bill was introduced today by the hon. gentleman from the government side, he thanked those people who had worked on the bill. He thanked the Standing Committee on Transport. I appreciated his remarks. We did have a good round of looking at the bill in committee. We had a great deal of support from all the members of the committee. We had a great deal of support from the chairman of the committee.
I spoke to the bill on second reading. I totally disagree with a bill of this nature originating in the Senate and then coming here, even though we can call this a housekeeping bill. Members in my party and other opposition members also disagree. This is not good practice. We do not think we should have a bill come to us to examine amendments made by an unelected body.
That may not seem like a very big thing to a lot of people. I picked up the papers the other day. There were some things in there about me because of some of my criticism, some of the criticism from my colleagues and some of the criticism from all the parties about this practice. I assume it was a generalization that I was being somewhat hypocritical. No one who knows me, who has been on the transport committee with me, would say I am hypocritical. That was the tone, because we disagreed fundamentally.
This is a good bill. There is nothing wrong with the bill. Some amendments were made and passed. But the opposition claims that the last place bills like this should originate is the Senate. Bills dealing with huge amounts of penalties, huge amounts of fines, huge amounts of liabilities should not originate in the Senate and then come here asking the elected people to put our stamp on it. We deem that incorrect. I am sure most members do. If members from the government side really looked at it they would also deem it incorrect.
I am pleased that we are going to support this bill. We think it is a good bill.