Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise again to speak to Bill C-47, which seems to be very controversial.
Yesterday and this morning, my colleagues explained the origin of the conflict that exists with regard to this bill and that puts several small breweries in jeopardy both in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.
As regards this bill, there seems to be some kind of collusion between the government and large Canadian brewers, who negotiated and put enough pressure on the government to bring it to exclude beer in a most unacceptable way, by ignoring certain provisions of its own legislation.
Clause 2, the interpretation clause of the bill, proposes a series of definitions. A definition of beer, meaning beer or malt liquor as defined in section 4 of the Excise Act, can be found on page 2, line 14. The problem is that beer has been excluded from Bill C-47. Everybody wonders why. Why would beer be excluded from this bill when the Excise Act is a general act that covers all sorts of things? It is wide in scope and covers all the products that are included in Bill C-47, as well as beer.
In other words, the only product that was not included in Bill C-47 is beer. We talked to people who draft legislation here and elsewhere, and they find it rather strange that Bill C-47, introduced by the government to modernize the Excise Act, covers all the products that were included in the Excise Act, which it is supposed to replace, except beer.
Before this new bill, the legislation included wine, spirits, beer, tobacco and distillery products. The existing act makes reference to breweries and tobacco products. It deals with everything, every single product touched by excise. There are provisions on licensing, rights of accession, offences, collection, record, accounts, required documents, warehousing and remission of duties, or what they call drawbacks in international trade. Bill C-47, which is supposed to bring that Excise Act up to date, also deals with everything, except beer.
How do we explain the fact that beer is not included in this bill? Is it an oversight? I asked that question in committee to the hon. member for Oak Ridges, because I wanted to know what would happen if we had forgotten to include beer in the legislation. After all, it is possible to amend a bill. I did not get any answer. Just a blunt rebuttal. We did not get any advice from the people who surround and support members of parliament in their work in committee, including the parliamentary secretary and public officials. We did not get any interesting advice. I was a little taken aback by the answers that I was given. Things did not make sense.
I had to come to the conclusion that something was going on. This is an act that the government has wanted to modernize since 1997 and everyone agreed—they even made promises to microbreweries—including the Minister for International Trade, the Minister of Finance, secretaries of state who have now become ministers, ministers who live in Quebec, including in Montreal, and they expressed their support to microbreweries. This is because they have one in their region.