Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for his intervention. I wish I had as much time today as I do when I am at PROC to fully develop these points. Maybe there would be less confusion if I did, because the principle of subsidiarity is not that the federal government should pass legislation just because another level of government asks them to. The principle of subsidiarity is delegating practical authority, and therefore the ensuing responsibility for that decision, to orders of government that are closer to the people.
Therefore, it would be a misunderstanding of subsidiarity to say we should pass this legislation because it happens to be the opinion of the Yukon legislature. Subsidiarity is about something much deeper than that. It is about creating mechanisms to give fulsome responsibility for decision making and for managing the consequences to orders of government that are closest to those directly involved. That might, in certain instances, even be a process that is resisted by those orders of government. However, the principle says better decision making outcomes are likely to result through that type of process.
Beyond that, if I understood him right, the member said he was less interested in engaging with the specific arguments about the points because he objected to the process by which previous changes were brought into YESAA. There is always discussion about mechanisms for doing better consultation for legislation. I know there were many people critical of the government's own approach when it came to consultation around, I think it was Bill S-3, where in fact there was a poor decision and the consultation did not even include the litigants in the initial phase of that.