Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Minister of Finance for his speech.
The fact that this is an omnibus bill has been raised a number of times in the House. The government denies it. However, O'Brien and Bosc's House of Commons Procedure and Practice, our bible of parliamentary procedure, indicates that an omnibus bill “seeks to amend, repeal or enact several Acts...”.
This 179-page bill amends 35 laws.
O'Brien and Bosc goes on to say that an omnibus bill “is made up of a number of related but separate initiatives”.
The word “initiatives” is an improvement over the previous definition and clarifies the situation.
This bill rolls an entire government bill, Bill C-12, into one measure. This bill contains an entire section on an extremely complex and important measure on the recapitalization of banks. There are measures that affect 35 different laws and nine different departments.
The minister claims that this is not an omnibus bill and that the committee and the House are not being prevented from conducting an in-depth study. How then does he define an omnibus bill? How does his definition differ from the definition in O'Brien and Bosc?