Mr. Speaker, Bill S-9, an act respecting depository bills and bills of exchange, is one of those complex acts that seem to be of interest only to accountants, stockbrokers, bankers and the type of people who have had to ask for some changes in the legislation in order to improve the efficiency of the agencies they use every day to facilitate the movement of money. That is what Bill S-9 is all about, to ensure the finances of this country flow more smoothly because unfortunately the legal profession has caught up with us and made simple bills of exchange.
When I studied bills of exchange many years ago, it was down to a simple statement about what exactly a bill of exchange was and it was all included on a simple piece of paper, a promise to pay signed by one person to another, and so on. I will not bore members with the exact definition of a bill of exchange.
The lawyers got hold of a bill of exchange and added clause after clause and indemnifications and other rules and regulations to the point now that these bills of exchange are practically in book form rather than a single piece of paper. As a result, when we want to move a bill of exchange or have a piece of paper pass from one to the other, we have to pass a book, a whole raft of papers to ensure that legal liability is covered off and indemnification is covered off and so on. That has become cumbersome in this electronic age and that is why Bill S-9 has been introduced here to improve the situation.
Without getting into long details, the concept of the bill is to leave the big book of rules and regulations and definition of bills of exchange in one central depository and therefore to pass a piece of paper referring to this document in a central depository, saying we agree to abide by the rules and regulations without having to pass the whole book or documents from one person to another as evidence of the debt. There is now one piece of paper saying we refer to all the rules and regulations in the central depository and that is where they will remain and we can refer to them at any time.
I am concerned that perhaps a generation from now this single piece of paper that we now pass as evidence to the central depository record is going to get bigger and bigger and soon we will require a new Bill S-9 with a new single piece of paper referring to the documents which refer to the original documents. Who knows where we are going to end up.
Efficiencies are in order and required. That is why the Reform Party has seen fit to support this bill. We are the party of opposition so we have reluctantly decided that in the interests of efficiency, improved financial markets and the interests of Reform it would be beneficial that we support this bill. On that basis I will close and leave the more complex remarks to my colleagues.