Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, how can one official there, in a senior position, be so ignorant of what is going on in his region? That is just one person we spoke to. We do not have the taxpayer dollars to go to every single person in the Coast Guard across the country to ask these questions but that was just one. If that is an indication of the management of the Coast Guard and reflects what is going on in that region, then we are in serious trouble.
We ask now, and I support the call for the inquiry, to ensure that the government has a clear understanding of what is going on in this valuable department in the country.
Nobody on this side, and I suspect nobody on that side, is condemning the work that the men and women of our Coast Guard do. We are proud of our men and women of the Coast Guard. As the minister said, they are ready to answer the bell. The fact is the bell is not ringing because they simply do not have the resources to do the job that we ask them to do. That is a serious problem.
We can go on all night on this debate. The reality is that Cap Rouge II was a serious incident. We have serious questions to ask about that. We will never know if somebody could have been saved. There were warnings. Just a while before that happened a person ran off a bridge in his car and there was no dive team to respond. There were warnings that something of this nature could happen and Coast Guard officials refused to respond in the proper manner.
We are asking the minister to go to cabinet and say that he has the support of the opposition as well as the support of Canadians to ask for more resources and a clear direction for the future of the men and women of our Coast Guard.