Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Surrey Central for the opportunity to speak today in support of his private member's bill, Bill C-202.
Before getting into my remarks, I thank the hon. member for all the diligent work on the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations that he has done. Much of that work is not visible to the public. While it is a committee that works in relative obscurity, it is important work indeed. It takes a dedicated parliamentarian to do this important work without the publicity or recognition that it deserves. For his dedication to democracy, I wish to compliment him. The constituents in Surrey Central should be proud of the work that their member of parliament is doing in the House of Commons for their benefit and the benefit of all Canadians.
I have been in the House for almost nine years. The experience has caused me to question the effectiveness of democracy and how it operates in Canada. I will speak a lot from my experience in the House.
For those Canadians watching on television, I want to outline what we are doing here and simplify the debate. Day by day we debate all the laws in Canada by which Canadians need to live. We continually try to fine-tune through our debate and analysis of bills the laws that are passed here and to which all Canadians must adhere in their day to day lives.
Legislation passed by the Liberal government is mostly enabling legislation. By that I mean the laws enable the government through regulation to determine the details of the legislation by which we all have to live.
The key point to be made, and that is what we are discussing, is that much less scrutiny is given to the regulations in the House. That is an extremely serious flaw in the legislative process. However we do have a committee that deals with that.
It is often said when we are talking about a contract or agreement that the devil is in the details. The regulations are the nuts and bolts and determine how the legislation will affect the daily lives of Canadians. We need to strengthen that part of the process. Bill C-202 is an important step in that direction. Canadians are greatly affected by regulations. We can liken it to the fine print in a contract.
To give Canadians an idea of how much work the standing joint committee is required to do, I dug out some statistics that were prepared for me last year by the research branch of the Library of Parliament. In just seven years, between 1994 and 2000, the Liberal government introduced 4,931 individual statutory instruments and statutory order regulations. That is 23,566 pages of federal regulations. The sheer volume of the work before the standing joint committee is overwhelming. We should not make its job more difficult when it identifies a regulation that does not comply with the laws passed by parliament. That is important.
It might be embarrassing for the minister and the government when the standing joint committee discovers that they did not follow the government's own laws but we should not tie the committee's hands when it wants to correct these regulatory errors.
It is clear to almost everyone that the disallowance procedure for statutory instruments should be part of the legislation. That is the oversight Bill C-202 attempts to correct.
As it stands now, if the standing joint committee identifies a regulation that does not comply with the laws passed by parliament, it issues a report to both the House of Commons and the Senate to disallow the specific regulations that were made in error. However under the disallowance procedure followed now, it is left completely to the discretion of the minister of the crown or the governor in council, which is really just a council of ministers, to revoke, amend or ignore the regulations identified in the report of the standing joint committee. Even the courts are unable to do anything about a regulation that is subject to a disallowance report.
Bill C-202 will fix those obvious defects. The purpose of the bill is to bring the Statutory Instruments Act into the 21st century.
This bill will give the disallowance procedure a firm legal footing. In the process it will strengthen our democratic processes and thereby be of great service to all Canadians. Once a law is passed by parliament giving the government the power to make regulations, it is vital to our democracy that these regulations be in full compliance with the law.
I will not have the opportunity to finish my remarks but I will conclude by saying that I have had a lot of personal experience and I feel that we do not realize how important this change is to the parliamentary process. We really cannot fix the flaws that thwart the democratic process. This is private members' business and I appeal to all people to pay close attention to it. All backbench MPs should carefully look at this bill because it will improve the legislation in the House. I hope I can conclude my remarks at some other time.