Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of State for Finance knows, I am a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. I have a keen interest in finance.
In committee, we did indeed study Bill C-38, passed by the House, which changed, created, amended or eliminated nearly 70 pieces of legislation. The bill was so big that the committee had just one minute to discuss the interoperability of the RCMP with the FBI in Canadian territorial waters.
We then proceeded to study the privatization of seed inspections, and that of fish habitat.
We were not really able to do our job. The government knows full well that the interoperability of the Canadian and American police forces should be studied by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, that fish habitat should be studied by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and so on. We, as members of the Standing Committee on Finance, were asked to study these issues.
The government often talks about the unbelievable amount of time we had to debate all this, but let us not forget that we were changing, amending or eliminating 70 laws. Roughly 280 hours were devoted to this bill, which is roughly 4 hours of debate only for each amended law. Four hours is the equivalent of two committee meetings.
I would like the Minister of State for Finance to say a few words about the fact that it made no sense for the Standing Committee on Finance to study such disparate topics and the fact that we did not have enough time to discuss each of the amended laws.