Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It will be a surprise to no one here that I'm going to say that I will not be supporting the motion as presented, for three major reasons.
First, there's a little bit of inaccuracy in the actual motion as its worded.
Second is the scope of this motion and where it possibly would go, especially as it relates to committee business, since we have a lot of committee business on hand, including our crab report.
Third is the duplication with what I believe is already going on with the National Energy Board, Mr. Chair, as we found out in some natural resources testimony of November 2, 2010.
With respect to the inaccuracies, the first line says “in light of the federal government's plan to explore for oil and gas”, but I don't think it's the federal government that's going to be exploring or doing natural gas exploitation. Between INAC and the NEB, of course there will be a decision on whether they will approve it or not, or whether they'll let any company go forward in Arctic waters, so I don't think that is really accurate.
The motion also says we'd be “calling witnesses to comment on, among other things”, which is, I think, a little bit of a scope statement that could open this up to a fairly broad hearing, as opposed to the next line, which says “the recent audit of the Canadian Coast Guard”. If we were looking at this from a fisheries committee that dealt specifically with the coast guard aspects of this, then I could probably be convinced to send it to the subcommittee to actually deal with it as part of our future agenda.
The third thing relates to the testimony of Mr. Gaétan Caron, chair and chief executive of the National Energy Board, given on November 2, 2010, to the natural resources committee. He talked about how the NEB is now undertaking an Arctic review that would be conducted in three phases. I will quote from his testimony in a few places:
On September 20 the NEB announced that the Arctic review would be conducted in three phases. The purpose of phase one, which is in progress, is to gather the best available knowledge about offshore drilling in an Arctic environment.
Phase two of the review will give the participants an opportunity to examine the information collected, to ask questions, and to provide their comments on the information. Then there will be meetings, and then the NEB will be proposing a set of requirements.
Finally, we announced that we would make up to $300,000 in funding available to assist participants with travel costs related to attending phase two meetings.
So it will be a very inclusive process.
One of the topics the NEB will examine during the review is the area of emergency response.
So this review is going to be undertaken. As committee members are aware, the permitting process includes INAC and it includes NEB for anything Arctic. This review is going on, which will be much more comprehensive than anything we could ever undertake as a fisheries committee.
So unless Fin wants to tailor this a little bit to say that we look strictly at something from the coast guard perspective, and look at it as a very tight scope, then I think all we're doing is muddying the waters for our work plan as the fisheries committee, and I suggest that we vote this down.