I'm going to encourage the committee members if you're not there already. This is on page 30 of C-64. This is extremely limited to really urgent situations if you read the wording. I'm proposing the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans “must”, but all the other wording continues as it is. The vessel or wreck has to pose a grave and imminent hazard. That's one. And that's if the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that it...so great discretion is already built in to the legislation as it is. Then on the declaration of the minister about the emergency zone, he or she gets to make up their own determination about the size that is reasonable with regard to the seriousness of the situation. So there's total discretion in here. And then it indicates a number of remedies, many of which could still include passage of fishing vessels, for example, through that area but just under certain circumstances.
With all of that, all that discretion built in and having this remedy aimed directly at a grave and imminent hazard, I urge my fellow members to recall that we had a government in Ottawa for 10 years that despite legislation and rules available to them, chose not to act and enforce them. Those of us who represent the coast remember that this government with good intentions on abandoned vessels will not always be in power, and if we say that there must be a declaration around an emergency zone, then that gives all of us as potential opposition MPs in the future to hold the minister accountable to uphold this part of the bill.