Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
Thank you for the statement of “despite...ministers publicly acknowledging federal responsibility for water crisis, they continue to support a completely contrary position in court.” That came from the Manitoba federation yesterday. I appreciate that.
When I look at this legislation, I see the Canadian government, the provincial governments, the Canadian water commission and the indigenous water commission. No matter what you say, with this legislation, we're not going to fix the water crisis tomorrow. We're going to be in court for years. You know that.
If this legislation said that we empower the government to build water treatment plants in co-operation with every nation in the country starting tomorrow, we could set up regional training centres with support staff to train water treatment people who are available 24-7. We could set up a system so that supplies for those water treatment plants were available, just like emergency transfers for health, so that you'd have a fly-in plane to bring a part to you immediately. If we had legislation that said that, we could start fixing those problems quickly. This legislation tells me that we're going to be tied up in court for years, and you're not going to get clean drinking water for years.
We need to change the legislation so that we're taking action now. This legislation doesn't do it. It's going to tie us up in court for years across many jurisdictions. I want the water fixed now. Don't you? Yes. This legislation isn't going to do it. This is just going to tie us up in court.