Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Following on the learned comments of my colleague who just spoke, my original intent upon reading this was basically articulated in the first sentence, which is, “This act is intended to ensure consistency with Canada's rights and obligations under international law”.
Now that the focus is removed from any particular convention, such as the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species and the Migratory Birds Convention Act, and is focusing now primarily on the Marine Liability Act, I think the first sentence no longer applies.
If the first sentence reads that it's intended “to ensure consistency with Canada's right and obligations under international law”, I would interpret that to mean a multitude of international laws or domestic laws we've passed to honour international commitments and agreements, whether they are laws that deal with international conventions, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord, or the plethora, or multitude, of international environmental laws. To now say that we're going to do this in the first part of this amendment and then limit the scope of it to simply the Marine Liability Act, in my mind, means that we have to do some housekeeping on this still.
I don't know how we would do that. I look to the mover of the amendment for some direction and guidance on what he's trying to achieve here. Either remove the first sentence completely or we have to vote and decide to defeat the proposed amendment by Ms. Duncan.