Mr. Speaker, on a more general basis, the purpose of the bill is to make amendments to the Excise Tax Act, the Excise Act, 2001, and the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, and to make amendments to certain other acts.
The bill is some 126 pages long and it includes obscure references to amendments that are not understandable on their own. We would need to look at the existing legislation to understand where they fit and how they tie in with other things.
It would seem to me that the House has taken up a great deal of its time and the committee's time to deal with these matters because they are amendments to legislation rather than through regulation.
It would seem to me that where fine-tuning, operational efficiency and fairness issues can be the objective of the bill, there may be an opportunity here, as an example, to suggest to the Department of Finance that in crafting legislation on matters, such as we are talking about today, that these kinds of issues, rather than being incorporated into the legislation itself and therefore requiring other legislation to change it, that the more judicious use of regulations to the legislation might be a way to get swifter action on some of the important matters that the member raises in his speech about helping charities, vintners, social workers and others.