Madam Speaker, the hon. member must misunderstand something. I have not changed my position at all. The regulation as it stood was, in my view, ultra vires. That is the position the committee took and that is the position contained in the report.
The statute put forward by the government is an attempt to rectify the alleged ultra vires status of the regulation, to replace the regulation with a statute. The House is capable of creating statutes and offences. That is what the bill does. The difficulty with the offence being contained in the regulation was that the House as a body never gave sanction to the regulation. The House did not create the offence. The regulation did and the regulation was put in place by bureaucrats, by government officials, and we do not accept that. I have not changed my position at all.
The second point he has raised has to do with whether it is still possible to do enforcement in the fishery. I suppose one has to have two feet in rubber boots on the ground in the fishery to understand this. The enforcement regime, as it evolved, was based on an offence enforcement regime. When the fisherperson made a mistake and went offside, the sanction was a prosecution, not a licence revocation. There has not been developed in the fishery, at least not in Ontario, a licence revocation regime to enforce the conditions. The regime that is there is a prosecution regime where a person is prosecuted for breaching a condition.
The only problem, as has been pointed out, is that the offence allowing the prosecution was created by and contained in a regulation. I, the member opposite and the House are of a view that we cannot let public servants create offences. Offences are created by the House. Prosecution happens outside of here, but we in the House create the offence.
That is why I agree we need the new statutory provision. Over time if the province creates a licence revocation regime, that is fine, it can do that. However, it is not there now and not having it now could create a big problem in the Ontario part of the federal fishery.