Mr. Speaker, I highly appreciate the comments made by my hon. colleague across the way, particularly his comments on the disallowance procedure for the scrutiny of regulations committee which is a joint committee of the House and Senate. I wish to congratulate the member on his election as vice-chair of that committee today.
As we debate the modernization of Parliament we know that it is an integral part of democratic reform. Another important component is regulatory reform which has been ignored for too long. Regulatory reform is important because 80% of the law that we see in this country is generally made through the back door. I am speaking of regulations and statutory instruments. Only 20% of the law is debated in this chamber. Members passionately debate and vote on legislation, and deal with those issues differently. However the 80% component is completely ignored or at least goes through improper scrutiny.
I would like to ask my colleague if he feels that the issue of regulatory reform has been ignored.
After hearing from various organizations and Canadians we know there has been an overlapping of regulations in Canada between various departments and different levels of government. There is duplication and many regulations are redundant. We need to separate those regulations into good, bad and ugly and get rid of those that are not needed anymore. Maybe there is a need for a sunset clause in some regulations. Maybe there is a need to harmonize the regulatory process or the regulations between different levels of government. Similarly, there is a need to set up an inter-provincial standardization commission whereby we could standardize various regulatory processes between different provinces.
There are many other things: regulatory impact analysis; cost benefit analysis; setting up input from the public and the media on the regulatory process; regulations sent to committees; and a regulatory flexibility act similar to the one in the U.S. These are things that need to be addressed.
Since the member has a lot of experience on this committee, would he recommend that we study regulatory reform in that committee? Would he urge the government to take some concrete action on regulatory reform?