Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest for his remarks. I agree with all that he has said. I want to point out that he has served on the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations for an uninterrupted 16 years. I do not know whether that is a record, but I challenge anyone to improve on it. It is certainly worth a medal.
In any event, today's matter is serious. The standing joint committee has done its work. It has found a regulation to be ultra vires, essentially illegal, and it did so for good reasons, as explained earlier. Simply stated, this House, Parliament, cannot let the public service create offences unless they have authority from Parliament to do so. Our citizens would not allow us to do this and would not want us to do this. This is the situation that has existed for historic reasons.
The fishery in Ontario and in other parts of Canada has relied on this infrastructure of enforcement, which, in the view of our committee, is not properly founded. The minister and the ministry have taken steps recently to correct that by passing legislation. In fact, the bill to correct this problem, as before the House now, has only one section in it and all it does is put into statute form what was in regulation, thereby correcting the problem the committee found.
What is not comprehensible to me is why, when the source of the problem is technical but real and the bill put forward by the minister and the ministry to correct it is technical but real, the House would not pass this bill on an expedited basis. It seems as though there are some members in the House who wish to debate the bill in a bit lengthier fashion in a way that would not allow quick passage. The net result of disallowing a regulation, which will happen within 30 days of the debate here today if we do not adopt the minister's motion, and of not getting a correcting bill in, is that the enforcement regime in the Ontario portion of the Canadian fishery would be put in jeopardy.
It is not like there cannot be terms and conditions attached to licences after this, but the enforcement regime, as it exists there now, is based on enforcement of terms and conditions of licences in an offence regime. I do not think that we in this House should be disallowing a regulation if it is going to give rise to that type of public interest problem. Only in extreme circumstances should we do that, where rights and liberties are clearly at risk.
In this case, although I stand firmly behind the report of the committee, as does my friend who spoke prior to me, and as other members of the committee would stand behind the report, we see the public interest reason in this case in referring that report back to the committee. That would have the effect of stopping the disallowance, or postponing it, I suppose, depending on what the committee chooses to do, but it would achieve the public interest objective in causing the government to fix the problem.
The fix is not in the report. The fix is in the statute, Bill C-52, which is before this House. I urge members opposite and those on this side of the House too, who may differ with me, to endorse quick passage of Bill C-52. That would solve the problem for the committee and solve the problem for the House. The government has already committed, prior to this, to undertake a comprehensive review of the Fisheries Act and its infrastructure.
I also endorse the comments of the member for Sackville--Eastern Shore on some of the bells and whistles attached to that public policy issue.
I also want to note the historic nature of the debate today. It is the first time in history that this House has debated the disallowance of a regulation under the terms in the Standing Orders and in the statute. I trust we will deal with it appropriately. I intend to support the motion, but I do not intend to put the file away forever. I am sure the minister will act in good faith to have that bill passed and I encourage members in the House to please consider that option.