Mr. Speaker, I did not bring forward Henry VIII, Queen Victoria or the Magna Carta. The fact that my colleague from Vancouver Quadra brought them forward is fine with me.
I do not want to argue about the fineries of technical detail. The broad detail and the broad thrust of this bill are the public right to fish which has been around forever. It is a very strongly held public right and something the public feels very close to. This bill replaces it with ministerial fiat and ministerial order. This bill will be challenged.
The problem is the government has exceeded its authority time after time. It created native only commercial fishery agreements which also exceeded its authority. There has been challenge after challenge. We now have a circumstance where because the challenges have come to the point of succeeding, the federal government now wants to change the legislation to allow it to do what it has been doing which is inappropriate anyway.
Why do we want to create another piece of legislation, Bill C-62, that will be challenged by an even wider range of groups? Do we want to get into a multiple year challenge that tests the Supreme Court once again only to see the potential for a government to finally get itself in such a jam that it wants to create another piece of legislation? Let us get back to basics, let us get back to square one and let us get back to what is actually good for the resource.