Mr. Speaker, what we are trying to do in this Parliament especially, which is what we should do in all parliaments, is provide opposition members with the full opportunity to become engaged in the discussion and debate on various bills before the House. We will continue to do that.
The best way I can explain why the government moved an amendment at report stage to remove the amendment put forward by the Bloc and approved by the committee is that, in the context of the bill, the government felt that it was fairly innocuous and redundant since the powers of the minister are clearly laid out in the bill and the minister, obviously, would not intrude into areas of provincial jurisdiction because that would run counter to the Constitution of Canada.
The government was concerned that it might be precedent setting. In the area of emergency response or public safety, the cooperation between the provinces, the territories and the federal government is at a very high level. In fact, the critic for the Bloc talked about when he was the minister of public safety in the province of Quebec during the ice storm in Quebec and the flooding in the Saguenay and the high level of cooperation between the various federal departments and provincial agencies.
I was pleased that some of the members of the opposition were able to elaborate that this was not precedent setting, that each consideration of this clause would be looked at on every bill because it would not surprise me in the least if the Bloc would propose an amendment similar to this for other legislation. For other legislation it might prove more difficult because clauses that are in statutes are presumed to have a special meaning if it is already part of the bill. So that was the rationale behind that.