moved that Bill C-43, an act to amend certain acts and instruments and to repeal the Fisheries Prices Support Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-43, the technical amendments bill. In the unlikely event that some members are not totally familiar with what the technical amendments bill does, it makes some minor corrections to a number of statutes.
Most of the provisions of the bill before us today were in the draft Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act. During the draft bill's review by the House and Senate committees, requests were made for additional information on a number of provisions. I understand this information was given to the committees but in view of the concerns expressed during the committee meetings, several provisions which were not objected to were nevertheless not incorporated in the Miscellaneous Statue Law Amendment Act which the House passed a few weeks ago.
Additional information also has been provided to parliamentarians and the public in the communications material for the bill. As a result, I believe the House could proceed quickly with these provisions. I initially wanted to do all readings of the bill today but I understand the House is not quite ready to do that. I guess it will have to go to standing committee now but hopefully it can be dealt with quite quickly and then brought back to the House.
In the period since the draft Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment bill was tabled last spring, a few other technical amendments have been brought to the government's attention. The bill proposes to amend the Special Retirement Arrangements Act to address incorrect references and cross-references which were omitted in the 1999 public sector pensions legislation that was passed by parliament. These changes do not affect the policies or substance of existing statute but simply ensure that internal references are corrected.