Thank you for that clarification.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the fines you'd like to see either removed or left as they are. I think you admitted right here earlier that perhaps the fines aren't significant enough to provide the kind of deterrent to have municipalities and provincial governments and other authorities comply with the law.
We've just finished a study of rail safety in Canada, and we reviewed a report by Doug Lewis, which was prepared for the government. One of the strong recommendations in that report is that there be a system of administrative monetary penalties as sort of a medium approach to discipline. In that system right now, you have a heavy-handed approach under which you can revoke a licence, and then you have a very light approach, which really has very little effect.
I would apply the same reasoning to navigable waterways legislation. We want to have some moderate form of discipline or penalization that actually allows government to step in and make sure that authorities--municipal authorities, provincial authorities--actually comply with the law.
So I would raise the issue of a major construction work that is undertaken, which might be three-quarters finished, and which might represent an investment of many millions of dollars by taxpayers, but for which the taxpayers themselves have no say in the process of getting approvals. Let's say that an authority didn't get the required approvals, and now the only remedy is demolition. I would suggest to you that's probably, in some cases, a remedy too extreme to be realistic. There has to be some other way of making that authority--that municipal council--accountable for that poor decision, one that would not impose millions of dollars of costs to taxpayers but that would still raise accountability, and make the community aware of a failure to comply. Would you agree with me?