Mr. Speaker, the late show has never come so early.
I am rising tonight to raise an issue that I initially put before the House on December 9, 2025. I am rather proud of the fact that I seem to have been the first member of Parliament to have put this on the public record. Hopefully people noticed, and yes, there is a growing coalition who wants to raise awareness of the issue I first raised here on December 9. It is division 5 within the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-15, which, at over 600 pages, takes a while to read, get through and study.
I want to categorically put it on the record right now that I see no sign that the Conservatives are filibustering Bill C-15, the omnibus budget bill. It takes a while to study a budget implementation act of over 600 pages. I also believe that since the bill was put up for first reading on November 18, there is no sign of delay since the House, by unanimous consent with my objection, adjourned a day early on December 11. We have only been back a little while, and 600 pages plus changing 20 different laws takes some time.
I maintain, as I did on December 9, that the most egregious section of the bill is the one that says that a minister can, on personal discretion, deciding it is in the public interest, exempt the application of any Canadian law, except the Criminal Code, from application within their area of jurisdiction and that they will make this public not immediately, not soon, but according to the act, as soon as it is feasible, with no time limit on that.
Since the time that people have become alarmed about this, there has been testimony before committee. Because, as we just did, we passed Bill C-15 on division at second reading, we did not have a recorded vote, which is why I have not been able to state on the record that I cannot possibly vote for the budget implementation act as currently drafted with the sections found in division 5.
Since then, because it did pass on division at second reading, it has gone to the finance committee and other committees for study. I found it interesting, in going over the witnesses put forward, the ways in which the Liberals are trying to justify this extraordinary power grab by individual ministers to exempt any entity from the operation of any Canadian law except for the Criminal Code.
The defence of this provision first started with the response by the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance, who answered and said that because “Canada has world-class innovators and entrepreneurs,” we need to build the strongest economy and “we are reducing red tape”, because division 5 of Bill C-15 is to amend the Red Tape Reduction Act. The hon. parliamentary secretary continued, “As part of this process, we are reducing red tape to broaden the use of something called regulatory sandboxes to help foster and spur research...and innovation.”
Since that time, the concept of regulatory sandboxes has been expanded upon by the witnesses from the Treasury Board before the committee. The witnesses put forward that there were “misconceptions in the public domain”, and they wanted to explain all that because what they said to the committee was that regulatory sandboxes are a “well-established governmental tool” to allow the testing of innovative products.
Where does this well-established governmental tool come from and where is it defined? Even after going back to amend the Red Tape Reduction Act, Bill C-15 does not include any definition of “regulatory sandbox”—