Mr. Speaker, my friend is wrong on several counts in his speech.
First, he says that parliamentary scrutiny would continue over the bill. However, if he reads clause 10(2) of the bill, he would understand that is not the case. It states very clearly:
For greater certainty, those permissions, leases and licences—including their terms and conditions—are not statutory instruments for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.
In other words Parliament really does not have too much to say about the bill.
Second, he also suggested somehow or another that it would be impossible to enforce the Fisheries Act if this amendment went through. Let me again quote from the scrutiny of regulations committee report. It was talking about disallowance of section 36.(2). It states:
Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.
The third point I would like to make is the member opposite attributed some concerns to the Ontario minister of fisheries and to Ontario Federation of Hunters & Anglers. In brief, he suggested that without licence conditions the minister could not regulate the species taken, the amount of fish taken, the gear used, the time for fishing and the location of fishing.
I would suggest that is simply wrong. If we look at the Ontario fishery regulations, those regulations quite clearly deal with those issues now. They talk about species taken, the amount to be caught, the location that the catch can be made and so on. The regulations in place already cover those issues.
However, as my friend from Winnipeg Centre is saying, what the government is trying to do is to avoid scrutiny of Parliament and make these regulations in secret without the benefit of gazetting so there can be public input and without the benefit of scrutiny of regulations examining those regulations to determine if they are in compliance with the intentions of the act.
Would my colleague care to comment on those issues?