Derek Lee

[Criminal Code, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I realize I will be cut off here by other proceedings, but I might as well begin some debate.

I have tried to follow the debate as best I can and I am disappointed that there has been some fairly wilful attempt to misconstrue, or perhaps even mislead, in relation to previous electoral commitments.

It is a fact that in the last Parliament a bill was introduced by the government that would have doubled the mandatory minimums for firearms crimes from the then existing one year minimum to two years. In fact, the election commitment and debate, as I recall it, referred to that explicitly, the doubling of those mandatory one year minimums to a two year mandatory minimum.

Some members have tried to suggest that this election commitment involved much more than that. The election commitment did not, and any attempt to suggest that is misleading of what the facts were.

Members are entitled to their own views. They may wish to misconstrue, and I suppose they are entitled to do that. However, as a long-time Liberal sitting in the House, a member who was active in this envelope prior to the election, I want to state that the commitment to double the mandatory minimums was related to precisely that, to doubling the one year minimum to a two year minimum, and not anything more than that.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the member agrees with me or not, but in looking at today's motion put forward by the NDP, I found it slightly misleading in the sense that the motion in three locations refers to counter-insurgency as the mission. That is not my understanding of the mission. Would the member care to comment? I am suggesting that perhaps Canada's mission might be much more than just counter-insurgency.

Also, it is my sense that if the House were to adopt this motion put forward by the NDP, we would essentially be reneging on or breaching a commitment made by the Government of Canada to our NATO allies and to Afghanistan, which commitment had subsequently been reaffirmed, I suppose informally ratified by this House. Would the member not agree?

[Points of Order, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a point of order in relation to Bill C-52, the budget implementation bill.

It is my view that a portion of that bill is drafted in a way that is not in keeping with the practices and customs of this House, that the bill attempts to exempt itself from our rules regarding parliamentary scrutiny of subordinate law, and does not even comply with the government's own internal rules on proper drafting of legislation.

The part of the bill I am referring to is clause 13(1) at page 20, line 16. It amends section 122 of the Income Tax Act and bears the bill subclause number (2)(b) and deals with the issue of income trusts and how they are to conduct themselves for tax purposes over the next four years, until the year 2011. For ease of reference, the margin heading reads “Application of Definition SIFT trust”, which is the short acronym for income trusts.

A notice of ways and means motion on the subject of income trusts was tabled in the House during the afternoon of October 31, 2006 and was concurred in a few days later. The intent of that ways and means motion was in part to impose a 31.5% tax on income trusts starting in 2007, but that for existing income trusts the start date would be 2011.

On December 21 the government released a draft bill for consultation on this issue. However, the clause in question today never appeared in that draft bill. The implementation of the ways and means motion is now found in Bill C-52. Subclause (2)(b) of the bill found on page 20 referred to earlier reads as follows:

the first day after December 15, 2006 on which the trust exceeds normal growth as determined by reference to the normal growth guidelines issued by the Department of Finance on December 15, 2006, as amended from time to time, unless that excess arose as a result of a prescribed transaction.

This clause which I have just read deals with transitional tax measures involving how a large segment of the Canadian economy and billions of dollars of taxpayer assets are to be governed under our tax laws for the next four years, and yet this is proposed to be administered by way of a reference in legislation to guidelines only, which themselves are no more than a press release. I have a copy of that press release that sets the guidelines which I am prepared to table today. Worse yet, this press release, according to the clause in question, can be amended from time to time, as I have just read.

The bill is silent on any mechanism for amending these guidelines or press releases and there is no official or specified repository of this information. What we have in this clause, in effect, is a delegation of subordinate law, not by regulation nor by ministerial directive, but by press release.

This action of the government, that is to say to apply a tax burden or levy against a group of taxpayers using a so-called guideline or press release, is unprecedented. As a matter of fact, the only reference I could find to a budget implementation bill using guidelines dates back some 11 years to 1996 and dealt with the reimbursement of a conservation expense. In other words, the 1996 initiative gave money back to the taxpayer. For the benefit of the Chair, this was clause 66.1(6) of that bill. The situation now before the House is the reverse.

Let me remind the House that the contents and consequences of using that news release are not minor in nature. They are very broad in scope and have a large impact on this broad group of taxpayers involving billions of dollars. The news release itself says, “The deferred application of these measures is conditional on existing,” and income trusts are referred to by using the acronym SIFT, “respecting the policy objectives of the proposals”.

Materials released with the minister's announcement indicated that, for example, the undue expansion of an existing income trust might cause the deferral to be rescinded. This introduces a whole layer of conditions, at least some of which appear totally arbitrary in nature and which the taxpayer must fulfill in order to benefit from the 2011 delay date of tax liability set out in the bill, and yet the bill is silent on these conditions. They appear nowhere in the bill, only in the news release.

The news release includes the concept that if the conditions are not met, the minister, by some unknown authority, can cause the taxpayer's deferral to be rescinded. That would actually result in a tax increase to the taxpayer. That is a new power found only in the news release, that the minister could by some unknown authority rescind a taxpayer's deferred status and somehow force the person to pay the tax sooner than the bill would otherwise have him or her do. That increases the tax burden.

What we are trying to prevent is a situation where the minister or his officials conclude, based on a news release or guidelines, not as a matter of law, that this or that condition in the news release is not being met or has been amended and then is not being met and so, almost by a fiat, a taxpayer's deferral is rescinded. The taxes would be imposed on the person sooner than the 2011 date that Parliament has set out and the taxpayer would be left wondering why and how all this could happen.

Marleau and Montpetit's House of Commons Procedure and Practice reminds us at pages 686 and 687:

In 1950, Parliament adopted the Regulations Act, which decreed that all “orders, regulations and proclamations...” would be systematically and uniformly published and tabled in the House.

This language is from the Regulations Act, 1950. I ask rhetorically, how does the scheme described in the bill herein comply with these practices. Clearly, they do not. It attempts to exempt itself from those rules.

Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice also has references defining statutory instruments.

Our current Statutory Instruments Act provides clear direction regarding subordinate law, offering instructions in areas such as the coming into force date, the means or instruments by which the coming into force will be achieved, the method to be used to publish the subordinate law, and even Parliament's role in the revocation of the instrument should it be found not to be in compliance.

Again, the so-called guideline tax measure referred to in the budget implementation bill also appears to exempt itself from parliamentary scrutiny.

I want to briefly turn to the oversight issue. Marleau and Montpetit at page 688 describes the authority of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations to “scrutinize any statutory instrument made on or after January 1, 1972”. Statutory instruments are referred to therein as:

--any rule, order, regulation, ordinance, direction, form, tariff of costs or fees, letters patent, commission, warrant, proclamation, by-law, resolution or other instrument issued, made or established...in the execution of a power conferred by or under an Act of Parliament.

Clearly, Parliament intended that important issues such as the one found in the budget implementation bill, should be manifested in a statutory instrument subjected to parliamentary oversight and not left to the status of a guideline or press release which can be amended from time to time by an unidentified government official with a computer and a printer.

Again, referring to the Statutory Instruments Act, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations is mandated to report to this House to ensure that instruments conform to 13 criteria of good governance. I draw the attention of the Speaker to criterion number 7, which requires compliance with the act with respect to transmission, registration or publication.

How are members of this House to know whether or not one of the minister's guidelines, which can be amended from time to time, was even published, let alone whether or not it conforms to the rules?

Criterion number 11 guards against an unusual or unexpected use of the powers conferred in enabling legislation. Again, in this case, members will not have the tools to make such a determination because a press release was used.

Clearly in this clause and perhaps others, the government has attempted to create subordinate law by press release in a way that is not accountable to anyone and certainly not accountable to this Parliament. This is not a proper and accountable way to legislate, particularly for a government that proclaims or touts accountability as an attribute of its administration.

Finally, this part of the budget implementation bill does not even conform to the government's own rules on proper legislative drafting. I have in hand a copy of the Privy Council Office document entitled “Guide to Making Federal Acts and Regulations”, which I am prepared to table as well. Page 3 of the document describes what it considers to be proper subordinate law-making. Suffice to say this bill, or at least the clause I have referred to, does not even come close to adherence to those rules governing the making of subordinate law. Given the historic strictness with which the House imposes on tax measures, these vague and arbitrary provisions should be treated as out of order and a nullity. This is taxing by press release.

I conclude by inviting the Chair to review this submission and to rule that the clause in the budget implementation bill is out of order and cannot be proceeded with in its current form. A bill with references such as this should not be accepted in principle and read a second time. This clause, and any other clause or subclauses ancillary to it, should be struck from the bill and ordered reprinted.

If the government insists on proceeding with the objectives of this clause, as wrong-headed as some members may think they may be, it could do so by way of a separate, properly drafted bill dealing with its scheme for taxing income trusts to which the transition rules are central, which the government seemed to be prepared to do last December in any case and which a committee of the House endorsed earlier this year. Obviously, we would expect that the new bill would be properly drafted and conform to the rules of the House.

Given that Bill C-52 could be voted on at second reading fairly soon, I would ask the Chair respectfully to rule on this at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, March 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I look through the budget, the government claims to be reducing taxes. Acknowledging that the government appears to be cherry-picking through Canadian society and has in a few areas extended tax benefits through the tax system, those are apparent and appear to be tax benefits to people who already have some substance or wealth.

There is nothing wrong with benefiting taxpayers, but the government, although it is saying it is reducing taxes, does not appear to have reduced taxation for the most vulnerable in Canadian society. It has not reduced taxes, at least that I can see, in the budget for the poor, for the single, for the single senior, for the childless. It has missed all these very important categories in our social spectrum.

Therefore, I rather regard the government's attempt to extend tax cuts to the friendliest group as kind of a cynical approach to politics and tax policy.

Could the hon. member respond to my perception that the budget is quite unfair to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society?

[Petitions, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to present a petition from constituents in the greater Toronto area. The petitioners call upon the government, through Parliament, with respect to the jurisdiction of Sri Lanka that Sri Lanka allow international relief agencies to provide humanitarian relief to Tamil areas, allow the investigation of a massacre of Tamil aid workers, and stop military operations, including bombing, against civilian targets.

[Points of Order, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a very brief comment. It may well be that these amendments are outside the scope of the bill in terms of the references to the Labour Board and the implications for the concept of essential services.

However, Mr. Speaker, in making your ruling, you might take this opportunity to convey to the House and through the House to its committees that just because we have a minority government and just because opposition members on committees are numerically and mathematically capable of overruling a chair, it does not mean that by overruling the chairs the issue involving the scope of the bill does not remain and that if the issue is not fairly dealt with at the committee, it could end up on the floor of the House, as it has today. This practice could multiply and accumulate if perhaps Mr. Speaker does not convey the message that the scope of the bill rules still apply at committee. Just because we can overrule a chair for whatever reason, it does not mean the issue will not come up here and that the Speaker will not accurately deal with that issue here.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member himself is no stranger to public security issues.

I do not have any trouble with the quote from Mr. Kofi Annan or with the Supreme Court quote earlier. Even our deputy leader, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, has articulated similar sentiments in a book.

I accept that there has not been placed before the House a hypothetical real scenario whereby we could show that our conspiracy laws would be inadequate and fail and the terrorist attack could proceed unimpeded unless we wanted to abuse the law in the absence of these sections that we are dealing now with in the sunset.

It is an excellent question. It may be that the absence of a scenario reveals that we in Canada just are not able to put together enough evil minds to create that kind of ugly scenario. I hope one never develops.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I could comment by agreeing with it. I think the court has it right.

I think everyone in this House would agree that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should not be used as a recipe book for a terrorist attack. The challenge is to have a balance where the state has the tools necessary to protect the broader public interest, including preventing an attack, but at the same time ensuring that all citizens are treated fairly in terms of their civil liberties.

We have made some mistakes as a country. We could argue they were minor; for the individuals involved they were serious. Failure to observe the letter and spirit of the charter has gotten us into difficulty. Our country would be better if we could observe the charter throughout everything. Getting that balance just right is the goal.

In creating these provisions, the two we are dealing with, I cannot recall provisions which were subjected to greater charter compliant scrutiny at the parliamentary level than these. The provisions are littered with charter compliance mechanisms and sidebars. Although the court has not had the ability to test these provisions in a real life scenario, I am very confident that the court would be supportive of Parliament in doing whatever it thinks best, provided we give due regard to the individual under the charter.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on the motion to extend the provisions of Section 83 of the Criminal Code, which, if they are not extended by a vote of the House, will lapse and die. Arguably, if there is a need for these types of provisions, new legislation will need to be introduced, thereby creating a gap in our law, if it is the will of the House and the government to proceed in that way.

These particular sunset provisions were added to the Criminal Code by Bill C-36 after extensive justice committee study and public debate. I was very involved in the work of the justice committee and I do have some personal knowledge of those events at that time.

The sunset provisions were inserted at the insistence of a number of people, including members of the House, for two possible scenarios. The first was the possibility that the provisions, which were quite new to the Criminal Code, might be misused in some way. It turns out that the sections have not been used and therefore have not been misused.

The second reason was in the event that the sections were not needed. Over time it was felt that the perceived need for this type of procedure might not be there and if the conspiracy that gave rise to this legislation was to end, diminish or calm, it could be argued that these more robust procedural provisions might not be necessary and that our ordinary laws might prevail and be usable.

In my view, I do not think either of those circumstances have occurred. There has not been a misuse of the provisions and the conspiracy that gave rise to them has not ended or calmed. I will speak to that later in my remarks.

One could say that these provisions were certainly not enacted because they were not needed. If they were not needed, they would not have been enacted. In fact, the public servants and parliamentarians who generated the legislation could see the need at that time and that is why they were enacted. One could argue that circumstances have changed and that is part of the subject of debate here today.

Why were the sections needed five years ago? I think the reason relates to the fact that there was an acknowledged gap in our criminal law, our common law, that simply evolved through the passage of time. Prior to the last century, the subject of security of the state was in the hands of the king. In fact, it was listed among the king's prerogatives and the king actually did take care of that kind of business.

We have all read history books and seen the movies. The king and his forces would actually detain and arrest people who were conspirators against the state. I suppose they did not make fine distinctions in those days whether it involved a conspiracy, a sedition, a subversion or a treason. These were all components of the common law in those days. The king simply would detain the person, perhaps arrest the person and make use of the dungeon and eventually liquidate the conspiracy.

After we entered into the 20th century, with the growth of civil liberties and written constitutions, it became apparent that our citizens needed rule of law. Commonwealth jurisdictions then adopted what were then known as the war measures acts. When the state entered into a serious war conflict, it relied on special legislation called the war measures act. It was used during the first world war and the second world war.

Eventually, in the modern context, those pieces of legislation were seen to be a bit too draconian for peacetime and therefore were dropped. We no longer have a war measures act. As a result, the legislation we relied on through the Korean War and the two world wars up to about the 1960s is no longer there so that the state cannot rely on any special provisions. It must use the criminal law.

We then had the terrible events of 9/11. Roughly 300 or 400 miles from here as the crow flies, we witnessed the events in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania. Following that, other events occurred in Bali, Madrid, Philippines, London and an almost event in Los Angeles. These events have been ugly. They were terrorist attacks, killing and maiming many and creating the maximum in violence, disruption and disorder. That is the nature of the threat.

As I mentioned, we do not have the provisions that used to be contained in the war measures act, and not only do we not have those, but in years gone by the state could rely on conspiracy laws. However, with the evolution of modern evidentiary rules, it becomes very difficult to convict for a conspiracy. As a result, because the sections have fallen into disuse, not many police or crown prosecutors are good at using them and the courts are not comfortable with them.

I would also point out that we no longer have grand jury investigations. These were part of our criminal process. A grand jury would be invoked, put in place and would investigate allegations of a criminal act or a conspiracy before they actually occurred or just after they happened but before criminal charges were laid. Two or three decades ago our jurisdiction stopped using the grand jury procedure.

At the end of the day, our laws have given up on the war measures act, the law of conspiracy and grand juries. My point is that there has been, by happenstance, a gap in our law. In peacetime, our laws work quite well. We are always reforming them but our laws generally are up to the test, but when the state gets into a conflict or it is at risk, it would be my view that the state needs to rely on a different set of provisions. These sunsetted provisions in Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, were intended to fill the gap.

It is also worth noting that all of our major allies had to do the same thing. This is not just a Canadian story. Our allies in the U.K., the United States of America and Australia all had to legislate to fill this gap in their laws as well. That is a notable thing and we in the House should take note of it. This is not a circumstances peculiar to Canada.

It is important to segregate things which are not politically, legally connected. I have read some of the debates and I have seen some of the media on this. We are not dealing with investigative warrants under the Security of Information Act. We are not dealing with investigative warrants taken out by CSIS to deal with threats to the security of Canada under the CSIS Act. We are not dealing with continued detention under the Immigration Act. We are not dealing with security certificates, which are removal procedures under the Immigration Act. All of those things are outside the envelope of what we are dealing with here.

We are dealing with two sections. The first one, the investigative hearings section, is both retrospective and prospective in its stance. It can look in the rear view mirror at threats and offences and terrorist activities that happened previously, or prospectively or pre-emptively into the future. The second one is the detention with recognizance section and that is pre-emptive in perspective. In other words, it does not look backward. It is there for the purpose of pre-empting an imminent terrorist attack.

I have tried in my own layman's way to conjure up a scenario when these sections would be used. This is one thing that is actually missing from the debate and I am not sure why. I am curious why security professionals or government officials have not offered a scenario which would explain a bit more clearly how and why these sections would be used. I realize that security professionals do not want to alarm the public. They do not want to reveal existing procedures. They are under oath to keep their information inside a security loop. These are probably some of the reasons we have not had that element of this debate.

It is also notable that this country's security apparatus is populated by officials who do not have the power of arrest. This is a very important distinction here. Most people think that CSIS officials can run around and scoop people off the street. The fact is they cannot legally or otherwise. CSIS officials are not even armed. They do not arrest people. The only people who arrest in this country are peace officers, that is, police officers. All the security professionals on the job are not able to make an arrest, whether it is at CSIS or CSE or in transport. They must be peace officers before they can arrest anyone.

As we develop our intelligence data, it is important to realize that if there is going to be any pre-emption of a terrorist attack by an arrest, it would be done by a policeman, not by our security apparatus. Most of the information we get involving security and intelligence comes from the broader security and intelligence apparatus. Some of it comes from police intelligence, but the bulk of it comes from our security and intelligence apparatus and our allies. That is a very important and indispensable function.

Because we do not have a scenario here, I am going to suggest the scenario of a border attack somewhere on the Canadian border. I do not think I am being right off the page here in suggesting there could be an attack. I do not have to go into any gory details; let me just say that an attack is possible and that the attack is imminent. Let me suggest that police and authorities may not have all the data needed to obtain a Criminal Code warrant for any of the existing provisions in the Criminal Code. They may have only one or two persons identified. They may have a possible target identified. They may have detected part of a cell and a likely target. They may not be able technically to connect all of the dots necessary to obtain a Criminal Code warrant. If they can, then they can take out a Criminal Code warrant and make an arrest.

Let me suggest as well that this data has not come from their own sources, but has come from an intelligence agency or an allied intelligence agency. I will assume for the sake of my scenario that the information is credible and real.

Given the potential for massive violence and disorder, pre-emption becomes the order of the day. It becomes a priority. If people are not sure what massive violence and disorder is, they should think about what happened in London, Madrid or New York City, just to get the flavour of what this is.

Under these sections a peace officer using credible data, probably packaged by an intelligence agency, either domestic or ally, would then present the information very quickly to the attorney general of a province. If some members think that is time consuming, some of our constituents have to wait sometimes to see an MP or to see a cabinet minister, but I can say that getting through to the attorney general of a province on a matter of priority happens very quickly. I have had the pleasure of dealing with an attorney general on a matter of that nature, and it was a very prompt and a very quick turnaround time. The information is then packaged for an attorney general, who must provide consent in writing. The information is then taken to a judge, who must also sign off and issue the warrants.

The procedure for the use of these sections is judicially supervised in the beginning. It is consented to by the attorney general representing the government. It is managed by a peace officer, police officer, subject to the Criminal Code. The entire process in both sections has been judicialized. It is totally judicially supervised. There is a warrant, a judge, an attorney general, and a totally judicialized procedure. It looks awfully charter compliant to me.

It has already been mentioned that our courts have agreed that these procedures are charter compliant. An argument that the charter is a reason that these sections should not be renewed, in my view, respectfully to all of those who feel that way, is not on; I do not accept that. There may be other issues involving civil liberties that concern them, but certainly not the charter, at least not in a way that I have heard in this House or in the courts up to now.

There are some side notes worth noting. Both the committee of this House and the committee of the Senate have reviewed these provisions and have reported back confirming their support for the provisions.

Also, there exists, as I pointed out earlier, an arguable symmetry between the provisions that we have enacted here and the provisions enacted by our major allies. They operate on the assumption, and I know there was collaboration back at the time these sections were enacted, that our legislation bears some analogy to their own, that when we deal with our allies, they will have the ability to act quickly, and when they deal with us, we will have a similar ability to act quickly.

If these two sections are to lapse, it is arguable that our legislation will not be so symmetric, will not coincide with the legislation of our allies. Since the threat of conspiracy persists, and I am informed that it does, they may be curious as to why we would allow these two sections to lapse.

I would attribute the argument that the sections have not been used to good intelligence work and good luck. Both of those have contributed to that. Regarding the suggestion that the sections are not needed, one only has to look at weekend reports from the United Kingdom, where public reports are that the threat level there is as high as it has ever been.

With all due respect to many in the House who are concerned about the civil liberties aspects of this, I hope the record will show that these sections are charter compliant and that they are there for the benefit of Canadians as a whole as a protection order. I hope colleagues will take all of that into consideration in the vote.

[Delegated Legislation, February 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to engage in the last few minutes of debate on this issue. Really, this is a legal matter for the House. It should not be addressed as a partisan or a political matter. Matters involving the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations have, by convention, always been treated that way by the House. The House is appreciative of that. By convention, it is not a matter of confidence in the government. I presume we can handle it today in that fashion.

The standing joint committee decided to commence a disallowance, a revocation of this particular regulation, because it was the judgment of the committee, on more than one occasion, that this regulation unduly infringed on the rights and liberties of Canadians by allowing public officials to create quasi-criminal offences to which penalties were attached.

Our law and our Constitution say that only Parliament can create laws that penalize the citizen. As a result, the committee has been firm on this over a number of years. This is the second time it has come to the House.

There have been seven or eight disallowances accomplished by the committee and the House over the years. Only three of them have come to the House. This is the third time we have debated, I understand, since about 1982. On only two and a half occasions, if I can put it that way, has the government rejected the view of the committee.

I have served on that committee for some 17 years now and I should say that in the whole time of the committee it has never been wrong in law when it reached a decision. I say that very clearly and very firmly. The government should take note of that. There was only one time when a justice of the Federal Court, in an obiter, which was not part of the decision, almost crossed swords with the committee. In the end, it was only in an obiter remark and did not. That was Mr. Justice Marceau in the Camano exemption decision of 1992.

However, I point out that the committee and its heritage allow it to be very firm in its view of the law. In its recent report on the subject of the part II Broadcasting Act fees, the committee meant what it said. The committee reads very well: just recently the Supreme Court upheld the provision held by the parliamentarians that those fees were taxes. They were disallowed. Now the government is saying it does not have to return the illegally collected taxes.

I believe the committee will make its views known to the House and thereby to the government on that. I am giving advance notice that the government should give back the illegally taken taxes. Otherwise, the courts will catch up to us, and that will cost us $1 million or $2 million in legal costs and a whole lot of time.

In any event, in dealing with this procedure and these rules, the House does control this. It is not the committee that prevails. The proposal, the resolution of the committee to disallow, to trigger a revocation, does not govern unless the ministers do not challenge it or unless the House confirms it. In this case, the committee and the procedure are asking the House to confirm the view of the committee that these regulations should be revoked.

In my view, these regulations are illegal and unenforceable. In theory, a citizen will not actually have to pay any fine. In theory, officials will not be able to do any enforcement if their lawyers are aware of it. Sometimes people will pay a parking ticket just because they got the parking ticket, but in this case the regulations are at risk.

Hon. members should please heed that warning. It is a little bit like a town having an artificial sheriff, a fake sheriff, someone pretending to be the sheriff, a person who has no legal authority but who purports to act as the sheriff. Sometimes that brings about good results, but when push comes to shove, that sheriff, in our scenario, has no legal authority and the town is at risk.

I will acknowledge, and it has already been pointed out, that the disallowance of these regulations will create a theoretical vacuum of enforcement, and that may be true. Just as a court of law will sometimes postpone the implementation of its decision pending a rectification of the law in some way to prevent a worse public ill occurring, so in this case it may be the judgment of the House that the disallowance should be postponed pending a rectification or remediation in statute by the government.

The government has told the House it is able to do this with the bill currently before the House for passage. If that is the rationale that sounds reasonable to most citizens, but with a major warning that this is the judgment of the committee and I point out that the committee has never been wrong in law, these provisions are illegal. They unduly infringe on the rights and liberties of citizens. This must be rectified at the earliest possible date, likely through a statutory enactment proposed by the government. I hope members on all sides of the House would support such legislation to repair this regulatory problem.