Mr. Speaker, it is my day planner.
We are here to deal with the Environmental Protection Act because the federal government decided to intervene in a sector that is not under its jurisdiction, to increase overlap.
I was using fisheries as an example, a sector where the federal government had intervened with catastrophic results. Today, we no longer know what fish stocks there are. This has certainly caused a disruption in major fishing communities in Canada.
There are lessons to be drawn from an example such as this one and from many others so the federal government will pay attention to our amendments and agree to incorporate them in the bill to make it more acceptable and in keeping with the Canadian Constitution.
I find it quite unbelievable that we have to defend this point of view. The federal government is acting precisely as if there were only one jurisdiction in Canada, a central, single government, as if it could decide for all of the provincial governments. They would be seen as mere administrations and not entities responsible to those who elected them. This is how things would be done throughout the country.
We have to keep reminding the government that it does not have full responsibility in each and every area of jurisdiction. They should be humble enough to accept this and to agree to redevelop a consensus model with the provinces, even though it could take a little more time to build something solid. At some point, we need to get interesting results at the international level.
Let me conclude by saying that, if the federal government wants to show that it fully respects everyone's areas of jurisdiction, first, it should accept our amendments. Second, it should invite provincial premiers to take part in international environmental summits to present the results they have so far, instead of maintaining that, as the only government, it has complete and full responsibility in this matter, which is not true. The government is violating the very constitution it claims to protect.