Mr. Speaker, I will start off by asking the parliamentary secretary to put in the entire text of the Supreme Court decision in the whereas section of the bill. Take out the part where it states that Parliament is committed to maintaining the public character and replace that with the common property resource. We will see if that is acceptable after second reading. I think he will find out it is not. If it were, we should put it in right now.
Many sports fishermen on the west coast have expressed serious concerns about clauses 43 to 46. The parliamentary secretary knows clearly that Mr. Bill Otway and others have stated this.
What I would remove is the 15 year allocation comments. I would also remove the aspect of the governor in council authorizing the killing of fish by other means. These are things that we would remove.
As well, the word “may” appears well over 100 times. I would take the word “may” out and put in the word “must” or “shall” in many of the circumstances.
Because of time permitting, I do not have all day unfortunately to go back and forth with the hon. parliamentary secretary. By the way, he represents his party well in our committee, although I fundamentally could not disagree with him more.
If the parliamentary secretary is so confident that it is a good bill, he should bring it to the committee now, before second reading, so we can put in those amendments and not have to worry about what may or may not be acceptable after second reading.