Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm obviously going to speak in support of the amendment.
Let's remember that the Liberals made the legislative requirement for a mandatory review of CEPA. This is actually part of CEPA itself. They had a majority government, and they established that every five years, CEPA will have a mandatory review. I understand that in the last Parliament they were a minority government and they chose at that point not to follow the rules, if you will. I guess that's their prerogative as to whether they want to play fast and loose with legislative requirements. They certainly chose to do that in the last Parliament.
But here we are in a situation now, Mr. Chair, in which they're still playing fast and loose with the rules. They think we can just keep putting this off to deal with other issues first. They want our government to be in a position where we're suddenly not going to respect the rules. Mr. Chair, I don't think that's a good trend or direction. We certainly want to abide by the rules as they've been set. We respect the laws of the land, even laws passed by the Liberals when they were the government. I think it's important that we continue to demonstrate that we're a government that plays by the rules. It's important for this committee to respect that. I think this is an incredible hypocrisy by the Liberals. There are rules that they themselves established and suddenly they don't want to play by them--or they want to continue not playing by them, I guess.
I think the amendment to the motion is important. It's going to re-establish that the CEPA review should be completed. Let's just get on with the business. We haven't said that we're not going to deal with C-288; we've simply said we're going to postpone it. Let us finish the legislative priority first, and then we'll get on with the other issue. We're serious about tackling the issue of greenhouse gas reductions, but let's get the legislative requirement out of the way first. Let's cooperate to work quickly on that particular measure. Then, after Christmas, when we reconvene, we'll get down to business on the other issue, Mr. Chair.
So obviously I'm going to be supporting the amendment as it's worded. I would encourage the Liberals to rethink playing fast and loose with rules that they themselves put in place when they had a majority government.
I would also like to caution the opposition members, whether they are in the Bloc or the New Democratic Party. I'm not sure why they would want to support a Liberal bill, Mr. Chair, unless of course they want to help the Liberals' chances, either in Quebec or against the New Democrats. I guess that's their prerogative. We would think they'd want to get on with doing CEPA and other issues. Let's get on with strengthening those.