Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly support the amendment as proposed by the member for Charlesbourg.
Clause 12 as written in the bill permits the governor in council to make regulations as he sees fit, but we have seen how this government operates in this House on the recent hepatitis C issue. The Prime Minister decides. The backbenchers follow orders. A mistake, an injustice occurs and it takes an uprising to force the government to re-evaluate.
Motion No. 8 merely permits some form of parliamentary scrutiny over the power to make regulations or laws in this country. After all, have all members of parliament not been sent to this place to control and make the laws that are to affect their constituents back home?
If we leave clause 12 as it is presented in the bill, we are abrogating our responsibility to oversee, debate and influence. We will be leaving it all to be decided by the governor in council.
I fully appreciate how the members opposite leave everything to the Prime Minister and the powers within the party, but hopefully this will not always be the case. Hopefully, at some time and some time soon, all members of parliament will have the power and will be able to exercise that power to scrutinize and control the legislation and operations of this place.
The legislation must be set up so that when that day occurs, the members of this place will have the authority to review regulations or laws with respect to DNA identification. That is what democracy is all about.
Why would we ever want to leave the control of this place in the hands of a select few? Do we all not receive the same mandate to represent our constituencies, to ensure our laws are fair and just to all of us?
As has been previously stated, Bill C-68 which introduced the firearms act has an identical scheme of review as proposed by Motion No. 8. Surely we should be consistent by providing a similar scheme here as well. I urge all members to support this amendment.