Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to this bill today. It is an important initiative for the member opposite and I congratulate him on it.
I come from a background of municipal government. I was a councillor and mayor for a number of years in a small town in Alberta. We went through this type of process a number of years ago. When we looked at old bylaws, it was amazing to see what kinds of bylaws were left on the books. Some of them as years went by were quite funny. We had one where a horse could not be tied to a fire hydrant. This was in the nineties and nobody was riding horses in the town anymore. That is maybe a lighter side of what we are trying to do here.
We support this legislation because it makes good sense. It also makes good housekeeping sense to be able to every once in a while stand back and have a look at what has happened. The fact that something like 65 pieces of legislation have been on the books for a period of 10 years and are not being used or have not been put into action means that we need to do a better job of looking at what we are doing. There is a listing of these acts and provisions and if that list is put forward it should be subject to automatic repeal. I believe that in the spirit of cooperation all parties have agreed that this is a reasonable thing to do. It is a good move by the member opposite to propose this bill which came from the Senate.
Keeping order in the House of Commons is the proper thing to do because we have enough trouble as it is keeping track of all of the statutes, bills and motions that come before the House. The proper thing to do would be to look over things that are redundant every once in a while.
Our party also thinks there should be a sunset clause on most legislation. Every once in a while we should stop and review legislation to ensure it is still doing the job it was originally intended to do. I believe that many of the programs that were put in place based on legislation and some other legislation that deals with specific issues that we face as a government and as Canadians, are not doing the job any more. Money has been put forward and either the need has disappeared or times have changed to a point where that particular function is no longer necessary. This kind of ties into the whole issue of this repeal of legislation bill.
This will be a very worthwhile exercise but at the same time we could be looking further to see exactly what has been put in place. I suppose we could do this through the budgetary process which allocates funds to different programs through the system we use in the House for supply. The budget process would be a good opportunity to have a look at the programs to which money is being allocated to ensure they are still of value and are necessary.
One of the questions that has been asked was whether the operation of the bill could be limited. For future statutes, it would be possible for the House to include a provision that says that the statutes in question would remain law notwithstanding the provisions of the repeal of legislation act. This would cover off any concern about moving forward and it would be particularly useful for statutes relating to international treaties.
Treaties are special issues. International treaties are negotiated by the government and then introduced in the House. However, over a period of time many may need amending or may need to be looked at to ensure they are still necessary. The House would be able to pass a resolution to keep a statute alive if needed.
I believe there are aspects of this bill that would cover off all the situations that could arise and, for statutes that are presently on the books, the House could pass legislation to keep those statutes that it deems important in effect.
This does not mean that one quick brush stroke will cover them all. There will be exceptions. However, we will have an opportunity to analyze each piece of legislation to ensure each statute is still relevant and to ensure we leave the ones in place that need to be in place.
It is important that we review this on a regular basis because, as we all get busy and governments change from time to time, we need to ensure that changes are made on a regular basis in order to keep things current and to ensure there is not a huge backlog to go over at any particular time.
The member from our party mentioned quite a few of the issues that deal with legislation and ministerial issues but this is a worthwhile bill and I am glad the member chose to sponsor it and bring it forward.