Mr. Speaker, the short answer would be that I do not have any great confidence that the government will proceed that way. The way in which Bill C-23 was handled suggested that strong consultation was not part of the modus operandi of the government.
The bill may be a bit different. It purports to be technical only but the government acknowledges it is about a very central part of the modern administrative state, the regulatory power, and it is well aware that testimony, as well as some speeches in the other House, have revealed some serious concerns.
In light of the fact that the bipartisan and bicameral Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations has repeatedly said that there is a problem with delegating regulatory authority to external bodies through the open incorporation by reference technique in particular, I would hope that the concerns of that standing committee do not get lost simply because the bill ends up before the House, having started in the Senate, with another committee having to scrutinize the bill.
As often happens, we sometimes have moments in the House when it feels very co-operative. It certainly has felt like that the last couple of days for very obvious reasons. I would urge the government to take that approach on this because we are on board with the fact that cleaning up how we deal with incorporation by reference in an extremely important area of law-making. The problem is that the government may inadvertently end up creating some democracy deficit problems.