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.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault

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