I think my comments were a little more restricted than that. I might agree with a more general comment, but my comments really were restricted to the federal government's role on transboundary water management, and specifically with respect to the Mackenzie basin. I think one could make the case more generally.
If you look at the Mackenzie, for example, the first meetings geared at getting some agreement on the Mackenzie were in 1972. They produced an agreement in 1997, 25 years later. That agreement is contingent on subsequent bilateral agreements that would actually provide the substance. Well, 12 years later, we have one, between the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, and that's possibly because there's virtually no water flowing between them.
It's characteristic, I think, of all federal governments. There have been times when the federal government has indicated that it might become more interventionist, or I won't say “interventionist,” but that it might take on its responsibilities, because I think the federal government really has to be the place of last resort where you have conflicts in interests between the jurisdictions.
The last time you saw that willingness was in the mid-1980s, when two successive governments--first, a Liberal government with the Pearse inquiry, and then a Progressive Conservative government, which followed up with the federal water policy of 1987--showed some interest in that, but it has really fallen apart since then. This is, I think, aggravated by the fact that the federal government has in many respects lost the capacity to engage in this sort of work even if it wanted to. It has largely stripped itself of much of the expertise it once had in terms of policy.