Kevin Lamoureux

“Madam Speaker, it is always fascinating to listen to my colleague opposite talk about all of the bills tabled by the government in the House. I have to admit that he is a great public speaker. That said, what surprised me about his speech is that he talked about how hard-working the Bloc Québécois is and about how the Bloc takes its work seriously. Over the past six years, we have said that the Bloc Québécois is the adult in the room, and I think everyone agrees with that. That is not surprising because we did not change our way of doing things and we will not change it, even if the government does have a majority in the House and in committee. The Bloc Québécois wants to improve bills. Our guiding principle is that if a measure is good for Quebec, then we will support it, and all the better if it is good for the rest of Canada. We are rather proud of that because we are diligent and hard-working professionals. My question for my colleague is this: The bill says that some definitions will be established by regulation, but it make me rather uneasy to give the government the power to establish definitions by regulation. It gives the executive a lot of leeway to change the regulations as it sees fit, without parliamentary debate. Could my colleague explain why the public servants who drafted this bill are insisting that some rather important definitions in the bill be established by regulation?”