Mr. Speaker, the group of amendments we are now dealing with, including the ones we have reinstated, are all about the creation of a sports dispute resolution centre. Many witnesses from the amateur sports and organizations both large and small who appeared before committee felt that this dispute settling mechanism for sports would be a useful body for them to handle issues rather than having to go to court or get into a messy legal battle.
Second, the witnesses felt the board would not only expedite relations between organizations and the government but that it could also provide arbitrators, mediators and so on who could offer their professional assistance to organizations that probably could not afford one on their own. It is a good idea and the organizations want it.
The clauses we put in actually improve the original bill. The board of directors would now be able to appoint its own executive director, someone who would actually run the day to day business, which is better than having the minister himself doing it. If we are going ask the board of directors to ride herd on this, it is only right that they hire their own executive director. In that sense we have improved the bill with the inclusion of that clause.
Overall, the amateur sport community will be well served by having this. Depending on what one thinks happened in the NHL, maybe we need the same sort of thing for professional sports, but that is another issue we will go through during next year's Stanley Cup. However, as for amateur sports, this dispute settling centre has good potential and I hope its establishment will serve the sports community well.