Mr. Speaker, I believe the Law Commission of Canada is a separate entity from the Uniform Law Conference.
The Law Commission of Canada that was just gutted in its financing is a different entity. It was a very valuable entity to helping modernize Canadian law in all fields and not just the criminal law field. The Law Commission of Canada has done superb work.
Actually, there is a matter of privilege before the Speaker because the Law Commission of Canada was established by statute of Parliament. What we just received with the Law Commission of Canada was the cutting of funding for this organization when in fact the Minister of Justice has to respond to the reports of the Law Commission of Canada. The Law Commission of Canada has a statutory authority to report to Parliament. Its reports are tabled in the House and the Minister of Justice has a statutory obligation to respond to those reports.
Over the years, the Law Commission of Canada has done amazing work on everything from immigration issues, to equality issues, and to issues pertaining to all of the workers of the land. If we look at its annual reports, we can see the breadth and knowledge of work being provided to the House.
In fact, I have tabled a motion in the justice committee that deals not only with the current minority government's decision to remove the financing from the Law Commission of Canada but also the court challenges program. These are two incredibly important and short-sighted decisions of the current government.
When the member asked me about the Canadian bar or anyone else, it raises the concept of consultation on government bills. I have no idea who was consulted on this bill. I think the provinces and the territories were consulted because we know of the input of the Uniform Law Conference. Therefore, there would have been wide consultations.
When we have wide consultations of the appropriate players, we generally get a bill that can be dealt with efficiently in the parliamentary process because a lot of the kinks have been worked out. A lot of the obvious problems have been worked through, people have come together to discuss solutions and so the legislation that is properly consulted and not merely ideologically driven comes to us in a better form for us to deal with.
Here we have an example of legislation. Even though it contains 46 different issues, we have an example of where we have had the broad consultation that was necessary. When that is done, our job as parliamentarians is much easier. We are not doing the same initial level of research, looking for the constitutional or other deficiencies that could easily show up in a piece of legislation, whether it is intended or unintended.
I am concerned when we get the other type of legislation which is the ideologically driven legislation and sometimes we get unintended consequences. That is especially true if we are trying to amend pieces of legislation that have deficiencies in them. In past years, we have sent some of the controversial bills before second reading to committee. This allowed the committee to do a better job at looking at the bill in total and making amendments to legislation that work for the betterment of the bill. When we do it the other way after second reading, it makes it much more difficult.
It really does set us up for all or nothing approaches, which is not helpful and not what is intended when parliamentarians from all parties come to this House to work for good policy or good administration, especially in the areas of justice.
This is a bill that has gone through sufficient consultation, the nature of it, but would it have been from the Law Commission of Canada? I am not sure at this point.
I do respond to my colleague, who currently also serves and works hard on the justice committee, by saying that I hope, and it is my wish, that we have good consultation on all bills that come to committee. Otherwise, what we have is just a deceptive practice of stacking numbers of bills high on the order paper with no intention of ever getting them through, doing it for a political agenda instead of a real work agenda. We on this side of the House are concentrating on the real work agenda for Parliament.