Mr. Speaker, prior to becoming involved in politics and coming to this Chamber I never in my life thought I would actually be making a speech on an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act, disallowance procedure for statutory instruments.
It is one of the most arcane subjects and titles that I have ever run into. I commend my colleague for Surrey Central for bringing this to the attention of the House. I think he must stay up awfully late at night pouring over books or doing something because I cannot figure out how in the world anybody would even have discovered this as being a problem, much less being able to come up with a title for it.
As I understand the situation, we in Canada, being a civilized democracy, are in a position of taking rules and regulations from government. We are in a position of responding to those rules and regulations as put forward by government and the government in turn comes to the legislature and speaks to us, the members of Parliament, who in turn, hopefully, are doing an adequate job of representing the people in our constituencies and the people of Canada.
In fact, if we were to take a look at the rules and regulations under which Canada is run, we would realize that approximately 20% of all the rules and regulations that we are asked to adhere to are actually legislation. The other 80% are brought in by regulation and that, indeed, is what this is about.
I make that explanation because I am a novice to this particular topic. I had to have the member for Surrey Central kind of walk me through this so that I could understand how important this actually was to the people who either read Hansard or are watching the debate on CPAC today.
Parliament has the moral responsibility and the responsibility to the Canadian people to make laws. At the same time, we as members of Parliament, as politicians, have a responsibility to react in an appropriate way to the direction that we take from the Canadian people. However, if we are only responsible for 20% of the laws that directly impact on the people of Canada and 80% of the other regulations that impact on the people of Canada, surely this place, where we are responsible to the people of Canada through an election process in our great democracy, should have the ability to oversee and possibly override the regulations of these agencies.
In my critic role as the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, I am aware of a couple of places where the rubber really meets the road, and I use the following as examples.
The CRTC reports to Parliament on an annual basis as is prescribed by law. Therefore our committee and people in the House of Commons who come to the committee have the opportunity, in public, for about a two or three hour period, to grill the people who are at the CRTC. However this is where the rubber meets the road because there are so many people in Canada who have serious concerns about the CRTC, the power and the regulations that it has and what it is bringing forward.
The CRTC designates licences. It designates how broadcasters, for example, will actually come to the marketplace with entertainment, information or with products. It comes forward with rules and regulations about Canadian content.
Interestingly, the direction the CRTC takes about Canadian content does come from the heritage minister and from the government to a very great extent, but the way in which it interprets Canadian content and the level of power that it brings against private broadcasters, and, indeed, even the CBC, is very profound. These are bureaucrats. I will give them full credit and say that they, undoubtedly, are trying to work in the very best interest of Canada and under their mandate by legislation and under the direction of the heritage minister and of the government but, nonetheless, they have the ability to make these regulations without us, without we who are responsible to the Canadian people through the election process, being able to override those regulations.
I can give another example, also in the heritage department. Under Parks Canada, which is an agency of the government, we are going to have the bureaucrats in that department making regulations with respect to marine conservation areas. This is new legislation that has just come through the House. How this legislation will be enacted and what number of people will be impacted as far as their fishing rights and their mineral exploration rights are concerned in the marine area that will be covered by the marine conservation area, how those things will happen, will not come under the direct scrutiny or the ability of this House to overturn the regulations.
So we have an untenable situation wherein we have well-meaning bureaucrats, and I want to again point that out, that these are dedicated civil servants who are really trying to do the best, in their minds, to bring forth the appropriate regulations. But across from those people we have the individuals, the Canadian citizens, who are being impacted by those regulations. Those Canadian citizens do not have the power of this place, the power of the House of Commons, to be able to have a scrutiny of those regulations. Indeed, I see this proposed law, as arcane as the title may be, as a very important element of bringing the democratic process to where it should be, and that is where we, the elected people in our elected, democratic, free society, have the ability to override and to impact the bureaucrats and the decisions they are making.