Yes, Mr. Chair.
In the testimony we had in the written submission from Martin Olszynski from the University of Calgary Law School, he raised this issue of not including municipalities and gave a number of very cogent arguments.
First, he stated that even though this ability exists in a lot of legislation, there's never been a case in which the federal government has actually sought this reimbursement. He raised the case of Lac-Mégantic. That, of course, was an explosion of a rail car, but it could have been an explosion of a pipeline. It was Mégantic that was having to deal with reparations to its town. They can, of course, turn to the federal or provincial government hoping they might help to meet those expenses, but municipalities face their own expenses. So the case was made by that legal scholar that it would be appropriate to add “municipalities”.