Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party. Bill C-205 amends the Statutory Instruments Act.
Everywhere we look in legislation we see far too much red tape and far too many regulations brought in after the fact by ministerial decree. If in any way, shape or form the bill could help to reduce that overburden of unnecessary and burdensome regulations, then it certainly has nothing but support from the Progressive Conservative Party.
The view of the Progressive Conservative Party is that the government should work toward the co-operative elimination of excessive regulations, overlap, duplication and waste in the allocation of responsibilities among the federal, provincial and territorial governments.
Canada is probably the most overgoverned, overregulated and overlegislated country in the world. Worse than that, we create new legislation without reviewing the old legislation. It causes a multitude of problems for individuals, for small businesses, for industry and even for overlapping government departments, from the municipal to the provincial to the federal.
On top of our excessive dependence on regulations, we also pass bills without sunset clauses. Never is there a bill passed in the House in which there is a sunset clause. Apparently the government thinks that when a bill is passed by the House, it goes on forever.
Surely the majority of the bills that are passed in the House should contain a sunset clause, which would mean the bill would come up for review in five or 10 years. Perhaps in the case of the long gun registry the legislation should have come back for review after three months. Maybe then only $900 million would have been wasted instead of $1 billion.
There are many pieces of legislation that have been passed by this House which have never been looked at again and where regulations have been added which have caused an unnecessary burden on taxpayers. I have a favourite example, but it is not my favourite issue, of how wrong-headed the government has been in its excessive dependence on regulations and its abuse of regulations.
I would dare say the majority of members in the House are not aware of the fact that under the new CCRA regulations, if a person challenges Canada Customs and Revenue Agency after an audit and actually happens to win the challenge, there is nothing in the regulations that prevents CCRA from charging the person again under another section of the law. It can continue to do that until it wears the taxpayer down. Whether the taxpayer is innocent or not, the person will simply give up and pay the penalty, whatever it may be.
Certainly, if a person has been charged by CCRA in violation of back payment of taxes or whatever the issue may be and the person has challenged it, ended up at a court hearing and has actually been exonerated, that should be the end of it, but not with that agency. It simply makes a lateral move under a different regulation and the person is charged all over again, along with penalties, back taxes and everything that goes with it. It is ludicrous.
Looking at regulations per se, we all know that regulations cover just about all areas of our lives and impact on us daily. Especially on the fiscal side there is a hidden form of taxation oftentimes, which raises the cost of doing business and we end up paying a higher price for goods and services. Perhaps the government is using unnecessary regulations to jack up the price of goods and services and collecting a little more GST. It is not beyond the realm of the possible for that to be the case.
In light of the effect that unnecessary regulations have on the economy of the country and on the lives of our citizens, it does make good sense that all new regulations be scrutinized by a standing committee of the House. I applaud the fact that we have members of Parliament who are willing to sit on and are interested in those types of committees.
It is not the type of committee that everyone would want to sit on. I think it would be fairly detailed and may cause people to get bogged down once in a while, but it is an absolute necessity in a democracy to have some type of watchdog on government legislation and, therefore, the regulations that come in behind it.
There is no better place for it. I disagree vehemently with the member of the government who said that the government already did the checks and balances. There is no better set of checks and balances than a committee of the House that is actually empowered, has teeth, and can do the job. There is no reason that it cannot be done in a non-partisan way. To say any different than that I think is to cast aspersions against the independence of members of Parliament.
One other thing I would suggest with regard to the bill is that a Progressive Conservative government would ensure that all proposed regulations were put on a departmental website prior to being posted in the Canada Gazette. What would be wrong with that? Most people have access to the Internet today and are able to pull up a government website.
If farmers were expecting new regulations to come down from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that would have a direct impact on the way they did business and perhaps more than likely increase the costs of being able to do business, then it would be good for those farmers to know ahead of time and actually be able to contact a member of Parliament or a member of the government and lobby those members to minimize the impact these regulations would have. They could use that information to convince the politicians that the regulations were not needed to begin with because a whole list of regulations already existed that did the same thing. There have been regulations on the books forever and no one ever thinks to look at them.
I wish to congratulate the member for Surrey Central because this is an important piece of legislation. I congratulate him on the fact that he was able to make this a votable item. I would certainly hope and actually expect all members of Parliament to look at this piece of legislation in a non-partisan way and recognize its value. It should be referred to committee, debated and amendments made if needed. It should be recognized for its value and worth, and hopefully it can be a contribution to this place.