Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question.
It is not just my opinion that we are opening this up to too much discretion on the part of the minister, or that the change of wording from “shall” to “may” is ill-advised. There are certain things the minister is required to take into consideration and changing that to a list of things that the minister “may” take into consideration is a dramatic and fateful change to this legislation.
It is not just my opinion. Even with the current legislation, there is a problem. We saw this with the court decision earlier this week, when Justice John O'Keefe of the Federal Court of Canada ruled in two cases where transfers had been denied. He did not question the idea that the minister should have some prerogative, but he did write that courts cannot condone completely unstructured discretion, and that in circumstances where a decision has such a dramatic effect on someone, the law requires a complete explanation, however short the decision.
In two cases before the court, it found that there was a serious problem with ministerial discretion as it currently exists in the law. The problem is even greater in Bill C-5. We have heard that Bill C-5 goes much farther down the road of ministerial discretion than is currently allowed.
I think there are serious problems. It is not just my opinion. It seems to be something that is coming out of the Federal Court of Canada in a decision earlier this week, on Tuesday, in which Justice O'Keefe seems to have been addressing this very issue.
There are serious problems with the whole question of ministerial discretion. The change in this legislation, with respect to the minister's power of discretion, from a list of prescribed criteria to a much broader, open-ended list is a serious matter. I suspect that, given what the court has already said, the present range of ministerial discretion will have difficulty standing up to legal challenges down the road.