Mr. Speaker, Canada was moving toward a passport system. Under this system the provinces would work together, because it is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, and we were getting the job done.
This attempt to centralize and to dictate from Ottawa on securities is a mistake. Historically, the federal government has had responsibility for criminal law, for banking and negotiable instruments, and for competition legislation. We have something called the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. The member should have been in committee with us last year when we were asking this officer what had been done with regard to asset-backed commercial paper; the answer was “nothing”, so the problem is that in areas of its own jurisdiction, the federal government has traditionally done nothing.
In the meantime, Vincent Lacroix is behind bars for 10 years in Quebec for fraud because of the rigorous and constant application of securities statutes in the province. It takes away nothing from the federal government in its ability to work. It does not stop the provinces from coming together. The federal government can play a role of facilitator in that. All sorts of things can be done, but that is not what this is about.
The opting-in provisions in what is being proposed by the current Minister of Finance will be worse in terms of a result than what exists now. People simply will not know who the regulator is. Traditionally, if you look, all the prosecutions under the sponsorship scandal were carried out by the Quebec provincial government. There were none by the federal government. Vincent Lacroix is the object of hundreds of criminal prosecutions, while not the first hour of the first day of the first trial on the first charge by the federal government has even been held. That is the reality of the federal government's lousy track record--