Mr. Chair, while I am disappointed that the members, the majority of the committee, still want to...I'm a democratic person and I do believe the will of the committee has been expressed.
I do think that we should still support this amendment, because at the end of the day, by having government giving this to members of Parliament, to indigenous communities, and to a wide variety of different stakeholders that operate in the space who would be interested or who are just interested citizens, I think it would be in their interests to be able to know that they were heard, that they were listened to, and that it was documented by the government in some way, shape or form and they could see it on a website.
What I would say, though, is that unfortunately there seems to be a penchant here where Liberal members, and unfortunately the NDP, seem to be opposing any suggestion for any improvements other than the ones that they have seemingly pre-approved. That's unfortunate. I think we all can agree that any piece of legislation can probably be made better, particularly if we look and if we ask questions.
Clearly, the previous amendment, which I'm just going to vaguely refer to, the amendment to Mr. Saini's amendment, would have allowed some flexibility, because the minister would have been able to deal with that where appropriate. Many consultations can happen. You can have multi-year consultations with the provinces, but then you can just say that this is what we've heard from these provinces and we hope to hear from other ones.