Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the essential ingredient that we should all be talking about is sovereignty over water.
I understand the previous speaker's concerns in this regard because sovereignty can relate to Quebec, the provinces and to the federal government. There are a lot of concerns when we get into federal and provincial areas, such as in this bill. We have other examples.
In my province of British Columbia we have some major concerns about a bill dealing with marine conservation being put forward by the Minister of Canadian Heritage. We are very concerned that any initiatives we may want to take dealing with west coast oil and gas, which is a provincial initiative albeit usually with a provincial-federal syndicate, could easily be pre-empted by the actions of the Minister of Canadian Heritage with a totally different agenda.
I would like the member to elaborate a little more on the subject. It is my view that federal short term initiatives or thinking can be a real detriment to regional or provincial initiatives and can circumvent what is for the greater good in the long term. That is a real concern with some of the legislation that has emanated from this place recently.