It has to do with the Fisheries Act; the member is quite right.
Here we have the same kind of thing. There are hundreds of amendments, many of them technical, some of which will lose the continuity of the knowledge of the people who are here. We can see how important this is. When we have a bill like this, we have the assurances, the sign off by the minister and all of the clearances, but technically, with regard to parliamentarians, there are more changes in this bill than any one person could possibly be responsible for or track to ensure that their implementation received the proper attention.
The Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations will have to review some of these to the extent that they are amendments to regulations which currently exist to make absolutely sure that the bills to which they relate have enabling provisions within them for that amendment to happen.
We have seen cases, for instance, in the Broadcasting Act there was a regulation which allowed the charging of fees for services provided to the cable industry. As it turned out, the fees were far in excess of the costs that were incurred by the CRTC and in fact were creating surpluses because the fees were excessive. It is currently before the courts. If it is on a cost recovery basis that is fine, but if the amount recovered is more than the costs, it is effectively a form of taxation. Taxation is not enabled in the legislation. In the Broadcasting Act a tax cannot be levied.
Members can see why I hesitate to attempt to try to provide some insight into even one of these because it would probably take an entire speech to explain one of the technical amendments in a way in which all hon. members could understand. That is something we cannot do, but I wanted members to understand that I am confident that the changes that have been made have been followed in due process and the departmental officials have given us the necessary assurances.
I believe members will find there is strong support to pass many of these amendments, most of which I agree very much are necessary to bring up to date the important legislation affecting the daily lives of all Canadians.