Elizabeth May
Saanich—Gulf Islands, British Columbia · Green Party · Canada
“It is easy to roll out solar panels, except that our provincial utilities get in the way. In any case, the cheapest source of electricity, reducing the cost for everyone, would come from focusing on renewable electricity. I do think there is some promise, although it needs a lot of work.”
“We are the only party in the House that does not receive a penny of support from the parliamentary budget, being both unrecognized and unfavoured. I am glad my colleagues from the NDP received funding to make up for what they lost when they ceased to be a recognized party. I have less money, but I am here, and I am not alone.”
“When it became clear that children were dying of Reye syndrome in New Brunswick because of forest aerial spraying by the forest industry. He stated, “I don't like to see people dying. This is one of the things I really wouldn't like to see.”
“That is not the only thing I want to concentrate on, although I will take most of the time, and I am grateful for the chance to speak to this bill now, finally, in this place. Regarding the removal of the excise tax, I have asked before about this in question period.”
“There is not even a link in the language used within the spring economic statement, the budget itself or Bill C-30, but it clearly, by inference, rests on this assumption: More pesticides are going to reduce food prices and help the economy. That is a leap. Let us say that is wrong, based on the evidence, in two ways.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary is a friend, so when I say a friend, it is not just rhetoric, but I am disappointed. When Bill C-30 was first tabled, I asked the hon.”
The complete record
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“Mr. Speaker, I am speaking now from a spot that has a chair with no arms, which means I can stand up and address the hon. government House leader . The purpose of this debate is to bring closure on the debate on Motion No. 9. I hope I will have a chance to speak more substantively to Motion No. 9 later this day. On an unprecedented matter and doing something unusual, which is taking the matter of changing House committees from their normal process to a motion debated in the House that will be carried by what we now know is a majority of Liberal members, would the hon. government House leader explain why it is urgent that we close down debate?”
“Mr. Speaker, I do not know to whom to direct the concern, but my desk has been moved and I cannot rise in my place in this space due to the post and the chairs. I do not know what to do about this. Perhaps there can be some accommodation organized by House officers. I do not know. I am sorry. I wish to speak, but this is the first time I have tried to rise in my new seat, and it is not really possible.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am presenting virtually today a petition from very concerned residents and people who have been exposed through their military service to toxic contamination from phenoxy herbicides. This dates back to an era even before Agent Orange was used in Vietnam. Various formulations were tested in the vicinity of Camp Gagetown in New Brunswick. The petitioners point out that the previous health studies were inadequate and had enormous gaps. They are asking the House and the government to please initiate a public, independent inquiry into the health impacts, on veterans and on neighbouring communities, of the testing of phenoxy herbicides and their widespread use in the vicinity of Camp Gagetown, including the subsequent toxic contamination, as well as the health effects for people who were in the vicinity.”
“Mr. Speaker, does it not occur to my friend from Vaudreuil that it is time to revisit what Jean Chrétien put forward as the most advanced financing laws in Canada, and there have been other points made by other members, to encourage Canadians to vote and to give people a reason to vote, even if they are in a so-called safe riding for a party they do not favour, and restore the per vote support?”
“Why has the government decided it is okay to provide funding to the NDP members but not to ensure that those very fine members sit on committees?”
“Mr. Speaker, this gives us a chance to look at something again. The recognized party status rules were created by law in 1963 to do one thing only, which was to provide funding to parties that have at least 12 members of Parliament in the House. That law said nothing about changing the rights that each member of Parliament has vis-à-vis each other. As the leader of the Green Party of Canada with a seat for Saanich—Gulf Islands, I should in theory have equal rights to those of every other member of the House, because the 1963 rule did not say, and no rule has ever said, that members of Parliament from parties with fewer than 12 MPs cannot sit on committees. I verified this quite recently with the clerk to make sure. As the clerk described it, it is a practice of long standing, not a rule.”
“They call on Canadian authorities to direct Canadian consular officials to protect the Xinka defenders and to fully implement “Voices at Risk: Canada's Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders” to protect their safety and to preserve the rights of the people of Guatemala and the natural environment there.”
“Currently the position of the Canadian ombudsperson for responsible enterprise is vacant, so petitioners are looking to the House of Commons and to the Canadian government to take action. The Escobal mine has been opposed by the Xinka people. The story is long and complex, so I will summarize. It has involved the murder of local indigenous people who oppose the mine. The courts in Guatemala stopped the company from operating until consultations could take place, but now, over the objections of the Xinka people, the mining operation wishes to proceed. The petitioners point out that Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and that Canadian mining companies must not violate indigenous people's rights to free, prior and informed consent.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to join virtually today, and again, as other members have done, I wish everyone a happy Earth Day. The petition I am raising today is not a happy story. However, it is all too typical. There are a lot of examples of Canadian mining companies operating particularly in Latin America, where there are allegations of human rights and environmental abuses. In this case, petitioners wish to raise and bring to the attention of the House the situation for indigenous people of Guatemala, the Xinka people, who have been for many years opposing the Escobal mine, which is an operation of the Pan American Silver company registered in Vancouver.”
“Mr. Speaker, oh, I wish that was all true. I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for saying we are committed, but if we are committed, why have we cut when the Liberal budget promised it would not be cut? This is at a time when the world is screaming out that there are increased humanitarian pressures. There are humanitarian pressures in Gaza, in Darfur, in Ukraine and all around the world, and if anyone looks to Canada for help, we have cut development assistance by $2.7 billion this year. We cannot talk out of both sides of our mouth forever. It catches up with us. We must do more. Canadians care about the poorest of the poor. We know that in the climate crisis, there will be more environmental refugees, more people turning up on our shores, looking for help and looking for assistance. The U.S.”
“Rather, we have a secretary of state who I know means well, but a secretary of state for development assistance is not the same thing as having a cabinet minister at the table. I hope to pursue this matter.”
“At the Rio Earth Summit, Canada had 0.48%. Now, tragically, the Liberals have broken that promise. We were never as close as we were under Mulroney, but we have dropped quite a bit. Breaking their promise, the Liberals, under our current Prime Minister , cut $2.8 billion from development assistance. At a time when the world looks to us to step up and help repair the damage done by the hole created by the U.S. stepping away from the poorest of the poor, we are doing the same and stepping away instead of stepping up. In a moment of sadness on February 5, I posed the question and pointed out to the minister that this is the first time in 50 years that Canada has not had a full cabinet minister responsible for development assistance.”
“cut funding to one of the biggest partners working around the world with Rotarians to end the scourge of polio. At the same time, pretty much, Elon Musk and his DOGE machine, along with his fake but real chainsaw, cut USAID, which was one of the world's biggest donor organizations, from a government state donor to the poorest of the poor. Again, Canada's role in this is important. We have shown, if not leadership in terms of dollars, leadership in exhorting others to do it. Our former prime minister Lester B. Pearson chaired a UN agency and set a target for industrialized countries, suggesting that if wealthy donor countries would only put 0.7% of our GDP into official development assistance, we could end poverty. The closest we ever got to that target was back in 1992 when the prime minister was Brian Mulroney.”
“However, on the issue of development assistance, there was a clear choice to be made because the Liberals said, very clearly, that they would not cut development assistance. This matters, particularly in the world today, where shocking things have happened south of the border. Under the Trump administration, two critical decisions were made that imperil millions and millions of the world's poorest. One was the decision to cut all ties and cut funding. The U.S. was the biggest funder of the World Health Organization, the organization that helps with immunizations against polio, malaria and TB. A lot of us in Parliament and across Canada are Rotarians. We worked with the program to end polio that was supported by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. When Trump cut funding to the World Health Organization, the U.S.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am raising a question tonight in Adjournment Proceedings that I first raised on February 5 at the end of our annual International Development Week. I raised a question in great sadness because the Liberal Party platform in the last election committed to something that mattered. It committed to not cut development assistance. That stood in stark contrast to the Conservative Party commitment to cut development assistance. It was one of those issues on which voters could make a pivotal choice. Sometimes, it seemed like they were saying the same thing: Liberals were saying they were going to get rid of the consumer carbon price and Conservatives were saying they were going to get rid of the consumer carbon price.”
“Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. Perhaps he misspoke. It was unfair to suggest that the Conservative Party is against the nominee proposed by the government benches to be the new Parliamentary Budget Officer. It is certainly not uncommon for the opposition to bring forward debate on concurrence in a committee report. It may be annoying. It may mean that I do not get to present a petition for another couple of hours. However, it is hardly an attack on the person who is being put forward. I just wanted to make that point. Perhaps the hon. member for Winnipeg North would like to correct the accusation that the Conservatives are against this particular person.”
“Therefore, the petitioners call on the government to stop any subsidies to the Pathways Alliance project and to do what is practical and meaningful, which is to reduce greenhouse gases, not expand them while pretending that carbon capture and storage will nullify the damage that expansion will inevitably produce.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present a petition. It is an e-petition that was put together and supported by 587 people looking at the issue of expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. The petitioners point out that any expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure runs contrary to climate action and the necessity of holding the global average temperature increase to below 1.5°C, if possible. The petitioners point out that projects, and specifically the carbon sequestration project called the Pathways Alliance project, are unlikely to work to hold greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. The petitioners also point out that even if it did work, it would be insufficient to undo the environmental damage of continued fossil fuel expansion.”
“Mr. Speaker, last Thursday in question period, in response to a question from the member for Edmonton Strathcona , the Minister of Energy completely dismissed any concern about the recent nearly one million-litre leak from the pipeline of Imperial Oil on Cold Lake First Nations territory, on top of frequent spills and leaks by Imperial from its tailings ponds and elsewhere. With Earth Day on Wednesday, I wonder if, as the Speaker says, the hon. minister might want to take it from the top and give a response that at least pretends to be concerned about the environment.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to put a comment on the record. The Green Party of Canada is 100% in agreement with the summary of what has happened with this bill that was just given by the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound .”
“Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about aspects of Bill C-22 , things that continue to include unacceptable elements from Bill C-2 . I could not agree more with the hon. member for Oshawa that the hon. member for Winnipeg North has assumed that people are filibustering when we are merely insisting that the legislation be acceptable. Bill C-22 is an improvement, but could the hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek let us know if the government will be open to amending it to deal with the problems in part 2 of the bill?”
“Over the course of last summer, I think 400 different organizations from various points of view, from refugee rights and civil liberties to how to control the Internet and rights to privacy, had a breadth of pulling together a massive coalition to oppose the bill. On that ground alone, perhaps the Liberal government should be congratulated for never before having launched a bill so bad that 400 civil society groups banded together to stop it. The government, while stopping Bill C-2 , never admitted it had made a mistake, again, by using a novel method of ignoring the opposition, except to table in September 2025 Bill C-12 and then to table Bill C-22 . They all dealt with largely the same subject matter.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have a good record. In 15 years, I have never heckled in this place, but I had a very strong temptation to respond and to encourage the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola , to inject levity, and say, “Hello, hello, hello” back to him when he made the Grand Canyon comment, which may go down in the annals of parliamentary history as a good way of not breaking our rule of not pointing out who may or may not be present in the Chamber. The member asked what kind of failure I thought Bill C-2 was. It was a catastrophic failure. It was a bill I never saw over the course of the summer. It was tabled in June.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will be proposing amendments, particularly with respect to part 2. The best thing would be to remove part 2 as a whole, but in anticipation of the committee's work, I will be preparing amendments to that part.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think it is the first time my hon. colleague the member for London—Fanshawe and I have had an exchange. I did hear his speech as well. I agree with his concern. For smaller service providers, this could indeed be a burden, so I will just say that I agree.”
“Although, under the bizarre terms in which I operate on committees, I am not allowed to vote on my own amendments, I hope that other members of the House and members of the committee will show support, and I hope the Minister for Public Safety will improve the bill to bring it to a state where people can vote for it and get it over the finish line.”
“This would create access to information about Canadians that would be accessible not only by Canadian public officers and by Canadian intelligence officers, such as from CSIS, but could also potentially be open to surveillance, and that data could be accessed, by foreign governments, including the United States government. A number of Canadians would have concerns about having their personal Internet information accessed by foreign governments. I think that is an unintentional consequence of the way the bill is drafted that needs to be repaired. We do not want surveillance built into the permanent collection of data, which would be required under the terms of the act as it is currently drafted. I want to make it clear that I would be very pleased to vote for the legislation. I will be preparing amendments and taking them before committee.”
“I thank Matt Hatfield from Salt Spring Island for his diligence in working with an organization that represents the concerns of thousands of Canadians. However, the concerns we have with Bill C-22 continue. The concerns are largely in the one area, and I asked the hon. Minister for Public Safety to entertain amendments on this matter, amendments to understand that if what the bill would require is surveillance capacity from Internet providers, it would mean they would have to permanently insert spyware into the platforms that Canadians use.”
“In this case, with the use of novel terminology, “reasonable grounds to suspect”, people do not know what they are looking for. A judge would have to deal with the issue for the first time, and I think we could say, at a minimum, that this is unwise in drafting. Where does this leave us now with Bill C-22 ? There are many improvements, particularly in part one, but there are some concerns with part two, as has been noted by numerous commentators, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to a group called OpenMedia. By the way, I pay a lot of attention to OpenMedia, because it is a very impressive organization as a small non-government organization that worries about Internet access and public policy. It also happens to be headed by an executive director who is one of my constituents.”
“I note that the Liberals have changed the definition of who would be able to access, from police officer to public officer, which would mean that the same terminology could apply to a CSIS agent or a police officer. The judge issuing a warrant, under many of these sections, would merely have to determine if there are reasonable grounds to suspect. Again, there is no background in law for this. When I say “jurisprudence”, to break that down to common sense, that just means we can go back and look up legal decisions where courts have struggled with what a word means, so the court dealing with the matter before it has somewhere to go to see what the previous judges said. The court can see the record of court cases on this matter so it knows what it is looking for.”
“However, while there has been much improvement in requiring warrants, the warrants would still be required to meet a threshold that the hon member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith referred to earlier in debate today. It is a completely unprecedented threshold for a warrant to obtain information and access to information: “reasonable grounds to suspect”. We find that language in proposed subsection 487.0142(2). (1235) “Reasonable grounds to believe” is a well-understood concept. There is much jurisprudence on what is required to have reasonable grounds to believe. There is zero jurisprudence on what it means to have reasonable grounds to suspect. It is a lower threshold. It does not make sense to put legal terms in that have no foundation in law. It would undoubtedly create confusion in how the legislation would be used by law enforcement.”
“Today I want to focus on what is in Bill C-22 and on the reasons that I certainly hope the government will go to a more normal parliamentary procedure, which would be to amend Bill C-22 to achieve the kind of consensus that would allow me, as a Green Party member of Parliament, to vote for it. I cannot vote for it as it is now on the Order Paper. Again, let me step back and say, as I have said in the House before, on the record, that Bill C-22 represents improvements over the portions that were originally put forward in Bill C-2 . The original access legislation would have allowed, for instance, postal workers to open our mail, and it would have allowed access to subscriber information from telecommunications companies without notice to the user.”
“This is interrupted by the innovation of the government in never admitting it has made a mistake or in not amending a bill that is on the Order Paper but rather replacing it with a series of repeated starts and stops. I am sure the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola , whose humour I enjoyed earlier, might make a comment on this. It is bizarre and certainly unusual. We started with Bill C-2 , and then we had Bill C-12 , which continued the anti-refugee rights provisions that were in Bill C-2. Now we have moved to Bill C-22 , on access, and the bill of course is dealing with access to information that is important for law enforcement. This is an unusual process, to put it mildly.”
“The member for Vancouver Centre , for example, has served far longer than I have, but I have never seen anything like this, for what it is worth. We started with Bill C-2 , which was not withdrawn. It remained there, and then it was largely replaced, although it was not withdrawn, by Bill C-12 . Now we have Bill C-22 , picking up on elements of what was unacceptable in Bill C-2. I have heard the Prime Minister in press comments talk about the ways the new Liberal majority plans to change our committee composition. Somehow there is a lot of showboating going on, the Prime Minister said, a lot of grandstanding, but honestly, the process of studying legislation has some precedents and parliamentary tradition that really do matter. One is to give a bill proper study.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak virtually, since a situation came up that prevented me from participating in person. Those are the rules of the House. [ English ] I am grateful for the chance to speak to Bill C-22 . I do not have lengthy parliamentarian experience compared to other members, but I have been a member of Parliament for nearly 15 years, and I have never seen anything like what the government has done in the area of the legislation that we now have before us. It initially came to us in June as Bill C-2 , and in that bill there were provisions for access and warrantless access that were combined with “strong borders” provisions, as they were then called. I just want to draw attention to the process of the legislation, because it is highly unusual. Again, obviously there are people who have more experience.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition on behalf of concerned residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands. The southern resident killer whale is, as all my constituents are deeply concerned about it, one of those issues that unifies people within all of British Columbia, particularly the coastal Coast Salish territories. The southern resident killer whale is an extremely endangered species. It is increasingly endangered, as petitioners point out, by additional ship traffic. Every additional Aframax oil tanker from the Trans Mountain pipeline, every additional expansion from the harbour authority in Vancouver—”
“Mr. Speaker, I know this may offend people. There are people who think there are too many lawyers in politics, but I do not think there are enough of us. I want to thank the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, whose legal background showed through in the way she put together that critique of Bill C-22 . I am also very concerned about changing “reasonable grounds to believe” to “reasonable grounds to suspect”. I would like the member to expand on whether she found any previous example of that kind of threshold being used. I cannot find a previous example of “reasonable grounds to suspect”.”
“Mr. Speaker, one recommendation from Madam Justice Hogue that is not in Bill C-25 to confront foreign interference but that I would love to see in Bill C-25, was to restore the political finance reforms that were introduced originally by a former prime minister, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien. Does my friend from Davenport agree that the bill would be strengthened if we were to bring back the per-vote subsidy that also encouraged voters to vote for the party of their choice even in ridings that were regarded as safe for another party?”
“Mr. Speaker, I certainly do support the member's key point that we should have, by now, acted to create the foreign registry for agents who interfere in Canadian democracy. However, knowing him to be an open-minded and fair-minded member, I would ask him if he would reconsider his opposition to the per-vote subsidy for fair financing, recognizing that it was one of the recommendations in the report from Madam Justice Hogue that in order to counter foreign interference, we should revisit the use of a vote subsidy directed by the citizens casting their ballot and giving a very small amount per year to the party of their choice.”
“Mr. Speaker, since the official opposition has had good success in obtaining amendments by working with the government, I wonder if the hon. member for St. Albert—Sturgeon River will be willing to pursue changes to the Elections Act that were in former Bill C-65 , which died on the Order Paper when the House prorogued on January 6 of last year. Might he be willing to get amendments over the line in committee to address the issue of the difficulty presented to candidates in collecting signatures, as was addressed in Bill C-65?”
“Mr. Speaker, I ask the hon. minister a very direct question and thank him for improvements made in the amendments in Bill C-25 to the Elections Act. I wonder if the minister could give the House a quick rundown on the sections of former Bill C-65 , which had been through committee, was being studied and had elements that are not included in this act. I wonder if he could explain why the government chose not to include improvements to the Elections Act from slightly more than a year ago that are now not included, such as removing obstacles for the collection of signatures for candidates.”
“Mr. Speaker, this is a petition that I am so honoured to present. I am always honoured to present petitions from my constituents, but this is e-petition 6955, with an extraordinarily high number of supporters. In fact, just under 24,000 people signed this. The first signatories on the petition are all scientists from around the world. In short, the petition notes that currently, under Canadian law, animals are treated as property and not considered sentient beings, but under increasing efforts internationally from scientists around the world, there is a very strong consensus that animals are sentient beings, not mere property. The petitioners, as I said, just under 24,000 of them, are calling on the government to pass legislation to recognize animals as sentient beings and not mere property.”
“Mr. Speaker, my question goes to the heart of the issue: Does the government respect science? We are hearing cuts announced across Environment and Climate Change in terms of its research efforts, and in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and its critical research. Hundreds of scientists around the world have expressed alarm at killing an entire segment of our scientific capacity for insect taxonomy. Has the Prime Minister ever consulted his chief science adviser about these cuts before the pink slips go out?”
“Mr. Speaker, there are many issues on which the member and I do not agree, but I think we do agree that there has never been anything like this not only in this Parliament but in any Parliament of Canada. A single bill, originally Bill C-2 , the strong borders act, was so universally panned and attacked by so many civil society groups, a coalition of more than 300, that the bill then had to morph from Bill C-2 to Bill C-12 and now, to try to get to warrantless access, to Bill C-22 . There has never been a course of legislation like this. I would ask my hon. colleague, with whom I agreed on many of his attempts to improve the bill in committee, does he think we are getting closer? We have at least gotten rid of the original provisions that post office employees could open the mail without a warrant.”
“Mr. Speaker, this bill regarding lawful access certainly includes many improvements. I would like to see more, but I will speak to that later. It occurs to me today, and I am sure the Minister of Justice has this on his mind, that in five days we mark six years since the largest mass killings in Canada, in Portapique, Nova Scotia. In the resulting inquiry, the Mass Casualty Commission report called for many critical measures to be pursued. When the Minister of Justice says we are going to hire 1,000 new RCMP officers, what springs to my mind is that they would all be inadequately trained, according to the Mass Casualty Commission. The commission called for an overhaul of the way that RCMP officers are trained. We are talking about a preventable tragedy. Will the government implement the report from the Mass Casualty Commission?”
“I certainly hope that the Senate will look at the Bloc Québécois amendment, which would make sure there is mandatory review of how this law is working within a confined and defined period of time. (1600) [ Translation ] In conclusion, it is clear that this bill is imperfect. No member of Parliament believes that the bill has been improved enough to make it perfect now. [ English ] We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let us hope that the Senate fixes the flaws, that the bill comes back to us and that the government accepts those fixes.”
“The notion is that the minister alone would decide whether they can order a telecommunications company to pull access to their system or an individual Canadian, who will not necessarily know this is happening and not have an opportunity to speak to it. The ongoing question is not only that this bill has loopholes, but it weakens existing protections that exist under other laws. Those points have been made well. I was going to particularly point to the brief of OpenMedia on Bill C-8 , which points out, “A bad loophole you pass in this legislation does not just weaken the law; it will prove far more important than the law's intended purpose.” There are serious loopholes that must be fixed, and they have not been fixed.”
“Cybersecurity is an interesting area, where Canada, in passing legislation, has an eye on what the U.K. threshold tests looks like for protection of personal information before our products can be used within the U.K. Certainly a number of experts have looked at this and think that Bill C-8 does not get us across the threshold for what privacy protections are required in other countries. In general, despite improvements in transparency, the reality is that this law, Bill C-8 , like other laws passed recently, would give individual ministers too much power. We do not have the requirement for warrants. There is not enough judicial oversight. We still have a situation where many of these orders can be made without the public knowing.”
“I very much hope that the Senate of Canada, in exercising sober second thought, will look at the debates here today and consider the briefs that were presented to the public safety committee from the Canadian Civil Liberties Union; the Citizen Lab, which is part of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; OpenMedia; and a number of other concerned technical expert groups that, while looking at cybersecurity, think that this bill still has flaws that would create constitutional weaknesses and fail to properly protect encryption and the security of private information. The concerns fall into a couple of broad categories. Again, when the Senate of Canada looks at this, I would ask it to please consider if the legislation is good enough to pass the tests.”
“As much as we can stand here and say it is an improvement, it is also an improvement because at least some of the amendments that were made in clause-by-clause in committee, amendments primarily from the Conservative Party members of committee, improved the legislation and did more to protect privacy for Canadians. However, still, despite some improvements that we welcome, I will be voting against Bill C-8 because there are still too many loopholes and too many flaws. I am quite certain of the bill's passage, and we do need legislation in this area, but not this. We are not ready yet.”