Madam Speaker, I will do my best to adhere to the rule of relevance.
If I understand correctly we are debating the Group No. 2 amendments. In the grouping we have a number of amendments, if I understand correctly, by the Canadian Alliance which seek to put into the legislation an element of mens rea or mental intent in the nature of the offences that would be created through the bill, that we find unacceptable and which the committee found unacceptable.
After having studied the matter, and I am told by our critic in this area, the member for Windsor--St. Clair, that the committee spent an awful lot of time looking at the issue and the way similar laws are designed and enforced in various provinces, I came to the conclusion that if the kind of language the Alliance is seeking to put into the legislation were to be put into the legislation it would make enforcement of the bill very difficult and the likelihood of obtaining convictions in the matter would be very difficult indeed.
The idea is to protect endangered species, not to create an endangered species bill which would make it almost impossible to protect endangered species but which would nevertheless have the name of a bill to protect endangered species.
It is on those grounds that we think that in any defence people might offer with respect to whether or not they intended to put at risk, kill, injure or in any other way damage an endangered species the matter of intent could be taken into account by the courts when it came time for sentencing, but that trying to put too stiff a requirement with respect to intent at the front end of the process would in the judgment of the committee create a situation whereby the likelihood of the bill being used as it is intended, which is to say to protect endangered species, would be reduced to the point where the usefulness of the bill would be called into question.
Those are the grounds on which we find ourselves unable to support many of the amendments that have been put forward by our Alliance colleagues. It is not because we think the matter of intention is irrelevant but because we think the matter of intention or mens rea is something that should be dealt with differently than in the way they are suggesting.
I might also add that none of us here are obligated to agree with what is passed in committee. I have certainly had many occasions in the House to disagree with what has been arrived at in committee, but in this case it seems to me that the committee has done its work rather well.
This is an issue that has been before the House for a long time, as I am sure members will know, not just before this parliament but before a previous parliament and perhaps even a previous parliament, and it is high time parliament demonstrated it was able to deal with the issue.
The committee it seems to me took its job very seriously, went about the process in a non-partisan way with a great deal of co-operation, and arrived at conclusions that are worthy of our highest notion of how a parliamentary committee should work. It is one of the reasons we are so distressed on this side to find that the government at report stage is dedicated to undoing the work of the committee and the great work done by so many members of parliament on the committee on both sides of the House.
It must be particularly distressing for government members on the committee to find that their work is now held in so little regard by their own colleagues in cabinet and in government, that at report stage we would see the slew of amendments we now see designed to undo the work of the committee.
One cannot win around here. Committees rubber stamp what the government wants and people say the committee process does not work because it is a rubber stamp. Government and opposition members work together to improve a bill, to respond to what they have heard from the Canadian people and from people who have come forward to indicate their concerns about the legislation. The committee process works according to the ideal, that is to say, not taking the legislation on its face as if it is beyond criticism but working to improve it in an all party way. Then the bill comes back, the government says that it is very nice and amends the bill back to the stone age from where it came originally, from the drafter's pen.
We think the government is reinforcing, in a terrible way, a kind of cynicism about the parliamentary process and a cynicism about the arrogance of the government, in this case not toward the opposition but toward its own members.
There are a great many qualified people on that committee. I will not name them, but I have known some of them for a long time. They have reputations in their own right as concerned, dedicated and knowledgeable environmentalist MPs. Here was an opportunity to take advantage of their expertise, dedication and the work they were doing with like-minded people from all parties on the committee. It would have been a great day for parliament had this bill gone into committee, been as substantially amended as it was, came back to parliament and then respected in its amended form by the government.
That would have been what we teach our kids in school about parliament, that a bill passes at second reading, goes to committee to be studied, improved upon and amended and then comes back to parliament for final approval. We do not teach our kids that a bill goes through second reading, then goes to committee and anything that gets done in committee which the government does not like gets undone at third reading. That is not the way the civics books read and it is not the way they should read, particularly when we know that what happened in committee was not the result of mischief, falsely concocted majorities or absenteeism on the part of government members that permitted the opposition to succeed in something they otherwise would not have succeeded in. No, what we have before us is a bill that is the end product of a very deliberate and well considered process, yet does not seem to mean anything to the government.
Members of the government who are in the know, in the loop, and who may have a little clout in whatever small pockets of the Liberal universe they occupy, a universe with many pockets and most of them lined, might want to consider why there is a growing sense of desperation over there with respect to how their party works. This is indeed an example of what is wrong with the government and what is wrong with Canadian politics.
I wish I had the opportunity to rise and say, is this not a great day for parliament, the committee did its work, parliament is now respecting the work of the committee, or at least the government is not seeking to undo the work of its own members, but I am not able to say that. Instead, the opposite is the case.