Honourable senators, I’m speaking today at the report stage of Bill S-17, whose short title is the “Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2023.”

During his March 21 speech at second reading of Bill S-17, Senator Cotter said the following:

I want to say, colleagues, that this is not the most exciting legislation that we will consider in this chamber.

Senator Cotter was right, so I’ll be brief.

When I myself spoke at second reading, I insisted that Bill S-17 be studied in committee despite its very special nature. Indeed, this bill differs from other regular government bills in that the Minister of Justice must, in the case of a corrective bill, submit a draft bill to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for study. These committees studied the measures now contained in Bill S-17 before the bill was tabled on March 19. In all, these two committees had just three meetings to study this bill, which contains 165 clauses and amends 58 statutes and three related regulations, making it a substantial bill all the same.

Colleagues, I insisted that Bill S-17 be studied in committee because I sincerely believe that the Senate must never shirk its obligation and its duty to push its reflection and its analysis of bills a little further and to provide sober second thought. Moreover, without the study of Bill S-17 in committee and its rapid passage at third reading, the two amendments mentioned by Senator Jaffer would probably not have been tabled and adopted, which, in the words of the committee’s deputy chair, Senator Batters, would have posed a problem. She said, and I quote:

If we had not studied it here, this bill may have already received Royal Assent and we would . . . have some of these unintended consequences with the Budget Implementation Act.

In my May 30 speech at second reading of Bill S-17, I raised some very specific and technical concerns about the bill, and our committee study enabled me to delve deeper into these questions and get some answers.

I was wondering about clause 141 of the bill, which proposes to amend subsection 48(3) of the Pest Control Products Act by replacing the term “dwelling house,” or “maison d’habitation” in French, with the term “dwelling-place,” or “local d’habitation” in French. However, a document from the Library of Parliament analysts states that the term “dwelling-place” does not seem to be a term that is used in English for “local d’habitation” in other statues. That is the case for section 109 of the Canada Marine Act and section 46.13 of the Pilotage Act, which are two provisions that are not included in Bill S-17, but were used for comparison.

I was also wondering what the difference is between a “dwelling house” or “maison d’habitation” and a “dwelling-place” or “local d’habitation,” since the term “dwelling-house” or “maison d’habitation” is used in 23 provisions of the Criminal Code and is even defined in section 2. From what I understand, the term “dwelling-place” can be more broadly interpreted than the term “dwelling house” and, as a result, there is a need for a broader exception for inspections without a warrant under the Pest Control Products Act to protect the rights of individuals when it comes to the invasion of privacy and trespassing in the dwelling-place. This is an important question that we asked public officials to ensure that Bill S-17 does not cause confusion.

Based on the response I received, I was able to understand the logic of the government’s reasoning. Still, I was perplexed about certain points. In fact, the purpose of this section is to harmonize the act’s own corpus of provisions and ensure that terms are used consistently throughout the same act, in this case, the term “dwelling-place.” Accordingly, a compartmentalized approach was taken to analyze the act, with a view to a vertical study. There was no consideration of terms and expressions used in other legislation, like the Criminal Code example. In my opinion, compartmentalized studies don’t seem to produce compelling results.

Furthermore, this compartmentalized or siloed approach to analysis explains the two amendments adopted by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. What other explanation could account for the fact that, in the space of 45 days, the government introduced two contradictory and opposing bills, which forced it to amend one of the two bills it had just introduced? A consistent, coordinated and horizontal approach would have avoided this kind of mess. Clearly, the government’s right hand does not necessarily know what the left hand is doing. It’s worrisome but true.

Nevertheless, I support the draft report of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs as well as the bill to be passed at third reading. I therefore ask you, colleagues, to support it as well. Thank you.