Pierre-Luc Dusseault

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on his election to the House of Commons.

I would like to talk about one of the topics that came up most often during the campaign. I am talking about Canada Post, which I brought up earlier with another member. The Conservatives were the ones who decided to put an end to home delivery, a decision that affects all Canadians. This decision has already had an impact on a number of communities across Canada.

Sherbrooke would soon have been affected by this decision. Does my colleague think that home delivery is important in his community? Is he in favour of cutting Canada Post services? Will he applaud the new government if it keeps its word and does not put an end to home delivery, but instead decides to restore it?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on his election. I also want to give a shout-out to André and Justine, who live in his riding. It is truly a beautiful riding.

I heard the member talk about CBC/Radio-Canada in his speech, but he just touched on it briefly. I would like to know what funding commitments this government is making for CBC/Radio-Canada, because this is an extremely important issue. He mentioned that it serves linguistic minorities across Canada. The broadcaster needs stable, multi-year funding, which we committed to providing during the last election campaign.

However, the throne speech did not mention this topic and I have not seen any figures about funding for CBC/Radio-Canada. Does the member also have a particular interest in the crown corporation and its funding, to ensure that it can provide quality services across Canada in both official languages?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not thank the voters of Sherbrooke who put their trust in me to represent them here in the House a second time. I also want to recognize and congratulate the member for his election to the House.

I was a little surprised that his speech did not mention Canada Post as a priority. He raised a number of issues in his speech, but he did not mention Canada Post. I have to wonder whether that omission was intentional, since the government is being unclear about the return of home delivery and about the commitment made by his party, which now forms the government.

Did he intentionally fail to mention this issue? It is a very important issue for the riding of Sherbrooke, for municipal officials in Sherbrooke, and for the mayor of Montreal, who expressed his interest in and concern for Canada Post and the return of home delivery.

I would like to know whether his government was truly and unambiguously committed to bringing back home delivery across Canada, including his riding and my own, the riding of Sherbrooke.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, June 18th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for her question.

It is a major problem. Ignorance of the law is not a defence. If we incorporate by reference foreign regulations written in foreign languages, we need to have the assurance, as parliamentarians and Canadian citizens, that these regulations and the incorporations by reference in Canadian regulations will be readily available in both official languages so that parliamentarians and Canadians can consult them.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, June 18th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad that my colleague from Winnipeg North asked me that question, because it allows me to talk about a problem that I did not have time to address in my speech. I alluded to it somewhat in my previous answer regarding Parliaments's ability to know what these references and the regulations they refer to are all about. These references can be found in other laws, which can also change over time.

For instance, if a reference is made to a foreign regulation and that regulation changes after being incorporated by reference in a Canadian regulation, parliamentarians will have no way of knowing it every time the regulation changes. It will also be impossible for Canadians to learn about these changes or to ensure that they are properly scrutinized in committee before they become law.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, June 18th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the status quo is not necessarily any better, but we would have expected this proposed new guide to be a little more robust and to ease our concerns regarding accessibility to these documents and the information that will be incorporated by reference into laws and regulations. It would have been appropriate—and this is what we tried to do—to ensure that the guide governing the use of these references be very clear and precise, and that there be no grey areas, which will be the case if this bill passes as is.

That is the point I was trying to make. We need to ask the government why it did not want to create a clearer, more precise and more robust framework in order to reassure parliamentarians that they would always have the right to scrutinize these regulations at the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations. So far, the government has not reassured parliamentarians in that regard.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, June 18th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share my speaking time with the excellent member for Chambly—Borduas. I have agreed to share my time with him so that he can speak on behalf of the people of Chambly—Borduas concerning Bill S-2.

In the next ten minutes, I will speak to the House about Bill S-2, An Act to Amend the Statutory Instruments Act and to make consequential amendments to the Statutory Instruments Regulations, on behalf of the people of Sherbrooke. I am going to try to make it understandable and to talk about its potential consequences and the reason why we decided to oppose it at report stage in the House.

I would like to thank the people who have worked on this bill, including the members for La Pointe-de-l'Île and for Gatineau, who have both spoken today. I want to thank them for their work on this issue, which was also done in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where witnesses were heard.

As we always do, we worked constructively in committee to improve the bill and respond to the concerns voiced by some witnesses in their testimony. Unfortunately, once again, the government decided instead not to consider any of those concerns and not to amend the bill as it was drafted.

This is unfortunate, because the concerns raised by the witnesses are legitimate. These experts appear before committees to tell us about their concerns and the reasons why we should make changes to bills.

Unfortunately, the opposition amendments are rejected every time. It is a shame that we do not have an atmosphere of collaboration in committees. Nonetheless, I would still like to highlight the excellent work done by my colleagues and members who have worked on this issue.

As I said earlier, we are going to oppose this bill, because a number of flaws have been pointed out. I am going to try to list most of them. I must admit that I have limited experience when it comes to regulations, but I have in fact gone through a very specific recent experience, having worked on the designation of the Sherbrooke airport under the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act.

Let us not forget that the 89 airports designated under the act were designated by regulation. The Governor in Council can decide at any time to add, remove or change, in any way, the regulation that designates Canada's 89 designated airports.

As the member for Sherbrooke, naturally I have undertaken to have the Sherbrooke airport added to the list of airports designated under the act. Unfortunately, the Governor in Council, the Minister of Transport, and his office, refused to add the Sherbrooke airport or any of the other airports seeking designation to the regulation. That is a shame.

That experience helped me to better understand how regulations work and how they are made, and to realize that they have to go through publication in the Gazette. Regulations are also subject to review by parliamentarians at the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations.

I would also like to highlight the work of the committee, which studied these issues and also expressed a number of reservations about certain aspects of the bill, reservations that the Conservatives simply ignored. The committee also did extraordinary work in that regard, but did not get support from the government and the majority members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. That is a shame.

That helped me better understand the importance of having clear regulations that ordinary citizens can easily understand and grasp the ramifications of.

In Canada, there are 3,000 regulations comprising 13,000 pages. Regulations are very common in our acts and regulations. Many acts give ministers and the Governor in Council the power to make or change regulations as needed. The advantage of a regulation is that it can be changed more easily than an act. It can be changed quickly. The legislator does not have to go before the House to change a regulation.

Thus, there are positive aspects, but there are also negative aspects, especially with respect to the information referenced in the regulations. We talked about incorporation by reference that will refer to other regulations or other information such as the rate, fee or other types of additional information in the law. This additional information that is referenced can also change. It could come from different sources. It could be trade agreements. In many situations, a regulation could refer to rates, figures or dimensions. For example, the automotive sector has the most regulations. The Department of Transport is one of the major regulation-making organizations. There are a lot of regulations and standards in that area. This information, which is not necessarily static and could change quickly, could be directly referenced in the law and in regulations.

Furthermore, the bill would allow for references to regulations or standards from other countries, which creates another serious problem: the accessibility of information. It can be a problem for a citizen if a reference is made to information that is difficult to access. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and according to the rule of law, everyone is required to understand and know the laws, which include regulations. It is becoming increasingly hard for the people of Sherbrooke to keep up with the regulations and standards, especially when references are made to texts from other jurisdictions.

Accessibility is not simply a matter of being able to read the regulations. People also need to be able to read it in the language of their choice, in one of Canada's two official languages. That is another serious problem facing the people of Sherbrooke who want more information on a reference that is in another jurisdiction. If it is in the United States, for example, the reference would be in English, and some people may be okay, but in the case of references in other jurisdictions, in languages that are less common here in Canada, it would be harder for someone from Sherbrooke to access that information.

Accessibility is the biggest problem with this bill. I thank the committee members who tried several times to better define accessibility to ensure that the documents referred to are always easily accessible. There could be one single portal where someone could access everything: references, regulations and the relevant documents, in both official languages. We have not received any assurances that this will happen.

There are other problems that I did not have a chance to mention, which is why we oppose this bill at report stage, since it certainly did not reassure us.

I would be happy to take questions from my colleagues.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, June 18th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, as well as the member for La Pointe-de-l’Île, for their diligent work.

I would like the member to inform the Conservatives, those listening and ourselves about accessibility concerns. She referred to them in her speech. I would also like her to speak a bit more about the concerns some people have about accessibility, as well as the possibility of having these documents in both official languages.

Could my colleague say more about these concerns that were raised?

[Committees of the House, June 16th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief as well. I would simply like to speak to the House about the matter before us, the adoption of the 21st report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

If the report is adopted, the committee will instruct the clerk to amend the Standing Orders accordingly. I therefore invite all my colleagues to read the 21st report of the committee, which explains in detail the changes to the Standing Orders that will be made if the report is adopted.

It is fundamental to Parliament that we discuss the election of our Speaker. After all, that person acts on behalf of the House of Commons outside Canada and receives dignitaries here. Thus, it is a very important role. That person also makes important decisions about the debates in the House. Thus, I take this debate very seriously.

The change to the Standing Orders proposed in this committee report is nonetheless significant. Although the changes to the way we vote are not fundamental, they are substantial.

As many of my colleagues know, under the current system, a candidate must obtain 50% of the votes in order to be elected. Thus, in 2011, it took several rounds to elect a Speaker. With the proposed change, we would simply use a ballot and indicate our preferences by ranking them in numerical order.

It is nevertheless an important change because, under the current rules, members can reconsider their choice after every ballot. With the system proposed today, our selection would be made as soon as we write it down on the ballot and we could not make any changes after that.

I only hope that this change will eliminate as much partisanship as possible from the election of the Speaker. The ultimate goal that we must try to achieve is to elect a Speaker who has the largest number of votes and whose election is not influenced by partisan considerations. Personally, as an MP who has a great deal of respect for the role of Speaker, I hope that we can reduce the influence of partisanship on the election of the Speaker as much as possible.

Will this new system improve our current voting process? It will be up to all of us to decide that tomorrow when it comes time to vote.

I also wanted to thank the committee members for their work. They held two meetings on this topic, on June 3 and October 2, 2014. They obviously heard from the sponsor of the motion, who brought this issue to the committee, as well as from a U.K. expert who represented the House of Lords. The committee assessed the pros and cons of the proposed system, the current system, as well as other systems that exist around the world.

I wanted to talk about the work that the committee did. In conclusion, I remind members of the House that tomorrow's vote is very important. If the report from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is adopted, consequential amendments will be made to the Standing Orders that govern this House. This vote should not be taken lightly. Before the vote, I urge all members to carefully read the report and the proposed change to the Standing Orders, so that they are fully informed before making this decision. I hope history will show that the House made the right decision.

[Committees of the House, June 16th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have a quick question about the discussions that took place at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the possibility of disclosing the results of the vote each time the votes are counted and an additional round is needed to reach 50%.

I would like to know where he stands on disclosing these results, in light of the fact that it was recently agreed that the members chosen to act as deputy speaker, for example, are chosen on the basis of these results.