Mr. Speaker, I briefly indicated in my speech that from time to time there are good reasons. First of all, if the act or some sections of it are conditional upon other things happening, obviously we do not want it to come into force.
For instance, if we adopted the bill regarding health warning labels on the containers of alcoholic beverages, there may be provisos and transitional provisions for certain companies or whatever that until they changed their label that they would not be required to reprint all their inventory or something like that.
Theoretically, there could be things where things have to happen. International treaties is an interesting one. Something as complicated as the Kyoto agreement, if there was a need to legislate that, that legislation could not come into force until in fact all the treaties were properly ratified by all the participants, and so I can see that.
With regard to the member's question regarding sunset clauses of basically all legislation, when I look at the book that just lists the statutes of Canada, I shudder to think what would happen if all of them were subject to sunset clauses. I have a feeling that Parliament as a whole would grind to a halt from going back and revisiting things.
I suspect that the tradition in Parliament has been to respond to the work as it becomes necessary. There are people who are vigilant on every piece of legislation, not only ministries, but the stakeholders outside of Parliament who come and make presentations to say that the circumstances have changed in the way we do things since we brought this in, that the technology has changed, that kind of thing.
I think the House has been responsive to stakeholders' needs, to government's needs, and to the needs of the people of Canada to act in the best interests of the people of Canada. On that basis, although it sounds like a good idea, I would think that maybe we ought to think about that tomorrow morning and see if it still sounds like a good idea.