Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is Bill 5, Regulatory Reform Measures Act. I would like to make some comments about it. The bill has been considered by your standing committee and the amendments that are being proposed are amendments that have been suggested by either the private sector stakeholders or by officials working in the government in the different regulatory programs. We believe that these amendments will make a difference in streamlining various processes and in eliminating red tape. We also believe the proposed changes will go further than that. What we are trying to do with many of these reforms is to establish a precedent that can then be applied to other regulatory areas. For instance, we are amending the Boilers and Pressure Vessels Act, to make it possible for the chief inspector to review information about the procedures a boiler plant operator will use in de-rating his equipment and to approve it without a special inspection. Similarly, we are proposing that electrical plans that have been signed and sealed by a qualified engineer can bypass a time-consuming review by the electrical inspection section. These amendments will demonstrate it is possible to use such streamlining processes and measures without reducing the safety factor and thus can be applied more easily in future reforms.
Similarly, the reforms to the Motion Pictures Act and the Consumer Protection Act, provide a new approach to harmonizing our legislation with other jurisdictions. There may be other applications to coordinating our regulatory frameworks with other provinces and territories in the future. I would suggest to the Members here, that when they look at these reforms, they should be seen as the first step in establishing a modern, less complicated, more efficient model for regulatory activity. While these reforms are valuable in themselves, we are also hoping it will be seen as examples of alternative approaches to our traditional way of doing things. The standing committee raised a number of areas of concern and provided some very helpful recommendations in respect to amending Bill 5. We have reviewed these. We have had consultations with the Department of Justice and relevant departments and agencies. I am pleased to advise that I think we will be able to address almost all of the concerns that were raised by the committee.
There is still a lot of work to be done in this area of regulatory reform. I know of the interest that honourable Members have, in seeing amendments to the Labour Standards Act, Condominium Act and others. I wish to assure you that our officials are working hard to bring forward a second legislative initiative that can address these. There are commitments under the agreement on internal trade to amend provisions of the Consumer Protection Act dealing with cost of credit disclosure. There is a need to examine our outdated regulatory system for pesticides. There are a number of recommendations on mine, health and safety that have been made by the advisory committee of worker and mine representatives. We are working on these and several other future initiatives. Given the very crowded nature of our legislative agenda and issues facing our Assembly at this point, it is difficult to know exactly when it will be possible to bring in these second-level reforms before the Legislature. However, I wish to assure you that our government is committed to addressing these issues at the earliest possible opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.