Mr. Speaker, I mentioned the confusion with respect to clauses earlier. I want to be careful to refer to the same clause as the hon. member. It is clause 6 which amends sections 9 and 10 of the existing legislation referring to the Hamilton and Toronto harbours, and so forth.
It always comes back to the same principle. We are legislators. We therefore make bills, debate them and look at how they are drafted. When something is written down, we can understand what it means. Evidently there are commissioners appointed under the Hamilton Harbour Commissioners' Act because there is a specific reference to Hamilton harbour.
There is no specific reference to Quebec but there is a tiny clause, which I mentioned it earlier, that says “the Minister is of the opinion—”. If the minister is of the opinion that he should interfere in Quebec, he will go right ahead and do so. The bill specifies nothing specifically—this is a pleonasm, forgive me—but it is so vague.
I am worried about this aspect of the bill. There is a danger of federal interference in provincial jurisdiction. The member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie quite rightly said that we accept the fact that it is a shared jurisdiction.
If it is shared and if we want it to work the parties must respect each other's jurisdiction. That is the only way it will work. If the government does not want it to work, it creates all sorts of mechanisms, as it has done in this bill. Provisions are included or, if not, there is some little all purpose phrase: “at the discretion”, “the minister's discretionary power”, or “where the minister is of the opinion” so that the minister will be able to do as he pleases.