Madam Speaker, there are two parts to the question asked by my colleague from the Bloc, at least in my perception. I will address it in those two ways.
First, concerning the whole question of consultation I agree with the member. At the same time the bill has been working its way through the committee and now into the House we have also been working on a bill regarding endangered species, the so-called SARA legislation.
It is interesting to look at the amount of consultation that has been built into the endangered species bill. It is a lot longer than this one. It has many more sections and pages. A good deal of them address the issue of consultation. The consultative process provided for by SARA is much more meaningful than the process provided for by this bill. It has few provisions and quite frankly they are fairly superficial.
Second, I will give two answers to the question of why there are three departments; fisheries and oceans, environment and now heritage. It is an excellent question. I will not even pretend to defend the government's answer that we got at committee stage because there was not one. However I will make this point.
There were two other instances where we could have done something to protect conservation areas. We have not, even though we heard questions earlier about the ones off the east coast and the ones that are being worked on. There is little protection. The two departments have not done anything to protect conservation areas up to this point.
We need legislation. This bill unfortunately is not it. It would not provide the protection these reserves, if we could get them, would absolutely need. The bill would not provide it.