Yes, obviously, we want to propose something like that. I had a quick chat with the clerk about some wording here.
Also, I still haven't seen the new wording of the amendment after we voted on the subamendment. Once I get the actual new wording of the amendment, it will be easier to try to insert something in at that point.
I want to go back to the point on how we heard repeatedly throughout the process with witnesses that this was rushed. That's why we are focused on trying to have a piece of legislation—with the addition of this new piece—that is going to actually take into consideration the environmental characteristics of the offshore area. The reason is that, when we put in a new piece of legislation or add a substantive chunk to an existing one, as we're doing with the Atlantic accords here, it's important that we take this opportunity to make sure that we do it right.
If you set the standard now in legislation for what they need to do, rather than just wait to do this process when the SLL application happens.... I mean, it kind of comes down to a lot of other government bills that we have seen where there's a change to the Criminal Code or whatever, but it's so vague that there is actually no certainty and it's left to the courts to decide and determine what's actually going to happen and go on. This causes more uncertainty and delay, and then we get some crazy court rulings that end up happening that nobody agrees with.
Therefore, I think it's important that we legislate to make sure that we set the parameters that we want as legislators, because we're the ones who are responsible for doing that work. That's our job. I'm not saying that the provinces haven't considered these things. However, when we hear from all these other witnesses about how rushed the process was or about the fact that they were only given a couple of days to prepare their witness testimony because they weren't consulted, that's where it becomes problematic. Because they weren't given the time to adequately prepare what they would like to see in the consultation phase, it becomes problematic. That's why we are going to bat for some of these key issues that came up during limited witness testimony on another rushed piece of Liberal government legislation.
I think it's important that we take the time to make sure that we get it right and that we raise up these specific points that, again, we heard throughout witness testimony. That's why this has become a bit of a sticking point here.
We definitely agreed to what the government proposed as a subamendment. I do think it did help provide a little bit more.... It kind of tightened it up a little bit, which is good, which is fine. The reason I wanted to let that pass was that I thought, okay, maybe we could tweak a few things here rather than try to do a whole massive thing at once. I thought we could agree on a basis point, and if there was a way to tweak that, to get the certainty around the environmental characteristics.... I just think it was important to do one, and then we can do the other.
That kind of answers Charlie's point about what the heck we're doing here.
My initial ask was whether there was a will from the committee to include “environmental characteristic” in this. That way I would be able to come back to this committee with a hard proposal for the wording around that. If we can do that on the fly here, that's great, but I was just trying to gauge the feeling in the room to see if there was a willingness to do something on this. I think we've outlined the reason and the case for why we should do that with regard to the characteristics of the offshore area.
If “characteristics” is too broad and vague of a term.... Well, I think “characteristics” is actually a good descriptive word because we know that the ocean floor is active and changing. It doesn't just stay exactly the same. It shifts. It changes. It moves. There are ocean currents and different things like that. There are different species there. They all play a role in the environmental characteristics of the ocean floor. It's a moving thing. It's a constant. It's not ever just completely stationary and idle like, say, a mountainside. However, even that changes. We know that.
Therefore, it's important that we have wording in here that is going to properly reflect what will provide the most certainty for investors and proponents and for the courts. There's a reason that the Department of Justice is here. We're trying to make sure that we have things that are legally going to work.
As legislators, it is our job to make sure that we have everything in the bill that needs to be there. Again, I'm not saying that the provinces are wrong. I'm just saying that I think that, while we have this bill in front of us, it is important to take the time to make inclusions that possibly were missed or were skipped over.
Again, we get back to the point that the bill was rushed, and here we are. We look at the long, extensive list of amendments that have been proposed here. I mean, I've only ever had one or two bills before me in committee over my four years as an elected MP, and I think this has the most amendments that I've ever seen proposed to a piece of legislation.