Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague who has recently been named the parliamentary secretary and I am looking forward to working with him on these very important files.
In the first part of his speech, which was regrettably split in half here, I did notice that he said this is an important issue to the minister as it is in his actual backyard, Newfoundland. However, the workers in the minister's backyard have had no regulations for four months. This was passed in the Senate in December 2020, on regulations that lapsed in December 2020.
When we pass this bill in the House of Commons, it has retroactive legislation. If this is so important to the minister, why has it taken him so long to bring it to this House for us to debate and get through the process?