Mr. Speaker, I think you would be hard pressed to find a single member of the House who has served on a committee and has not spent time going clause by clause through legislation, working out actual disagreements among people on what the particular clauses mean in French or in English and reworking the translations of them so that they are, indeed, consistent. I think every single one of us who has ever sat on a parliamentary committee has had that experience. That is normal.
With regard to the point of order raised by my friend, he says the bill is not in the proper form. The portion he has quoted is actually not part of the bill. It is part of the summary of the bill.
O'Brien and Bosc, page 733, reads as follows, in reference to explanatory notes:
When the purpose of a bill is to amend an existing Act,—
That is the case with this bill.
—the drafters will insert notes to explain the amendments made....
It goes on to say:
They are not considered to be part of the bill....
I will say that again for the benefit of my friend, “They are not considered to be part of the bill...”. Therefore, he cannot stand in front of you, Mr. Speaker, and then complain about those notes, saying it then means that the bill is not in the proper form, because they are not part of the bill and, in fact, they disappear from subsequent reprints of the bill.
There is simply no merit to the point he has raised, which is a transparent delay tactic, and we will come back to speak to this with some further submissions.