To begin, Mr. Chairman, if you write into legislation something that goes beyond principle and it involves a lot of words—which you know as lawyers describe them, they're million dollar words or silver dollar words—you open up a field day in court for challenges. Whereas the principle of the habitat protection provision in clause 35 is watertight.
If the fisheries officials, in consultation with public interests and proponents in projects, can work out common-sense practical solutions, we're all for that, but that's already in the act. This provision creates all this seriatim list of exemptions and exceptions that a court is going to have to determine in favour of the act, which gives all kinds of holes in the Swiss cheese to opt-out, to have only certain fish covered for example, to have only certain rivers and lakes be regarded as high risk and other practices regarded as low risk. We're giving all kinds of opt-out clauses.
There's a place in regulation for that, but not in legislation. That's what's so offensive about the way to create all this watertight list of language, which is being passed through a finance committee not an appropriate fisheries or environment committee. That makes a travesty of the democratic process of hearing from expert witnesses, not just former ministers but scientists, biologists, wildlife interests, and conservation groups. They should be here and not limited to four days but to properly deal and dispose with these questions.