Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to make some comments on this bill.
I want to thank my colleague from Halifax who spoke on this bill on Friday and emphasize the lack of work that was being done on the issue of Sable Island to ensure that environmental precautions were in place, and that there was follow-up to ensure that there was no damage being done to Sable Island as well as other areas.
We have heard a lot about this bill and the reasons why it is before us. It is just mechanical and not really important. It is just moving one thing from the other and not really changing anything. However, this piece of legislation is one of the most blatant examples of what was happening with this government. It is one of the most blatant examples of incompetence
It shows how the year prior to the prime ministerial change and the time following has seen a government in disarray, not properly looking after the business of the country, overall incompetence in financial mismanagement, and being out on the bottom line figure by $7 billion. That is what we have been dealing with. Now we are told we have to fix this mess, and that we are going to do it by just switching it over in this piece of legislation.
This is an opportunity within this bill to clean up some of the problems, such as the Coast Guard not being adequately funded, as my colleagues from the Bloc have mentioned. This will be an opportune time to do that. I would suggest that in committee we are going to do more than just a little mechanical change. There may be robots on the government's side that are operating mechanically, but I can tell members that most of my colleagues here in the House from the opposition side are not acting on purely a mechanical change. We are going to fix what was wrong to start off with and ensure it gets done in committee.
The government has actually admitted to this incompetence. One needs only to look at the parliamentary secretary's speech on Friday. He talked about how they did this one day, then by an order in council they did that, and then they tried to fix it on another day. It is so blatantly there. It is important that the rest of us in the House from the opposition side ensure that we are not going to tolerate that incompetence. The government is in a position to finally do what it should have done with recommendations from that previous report.
There have been numerous overlaps and there is confusion in departments. We are going to see a lot more of that in other departments as well. I saw the new list of ministers with ministers acting under different departments and their bailiwicks over there. Within one department, it looks like there are two or three ministers looking after the same issue. There is a mess throughout the whole process. The number of ministerial increases directly relates to the number of promises the Prime Minister had to make to his loyal leadership people. We saw many more people put in place and much more confusion happening within the government. What we see in this department, we are going to see elsewhere if we do not keep on top of things and ensure that taxpayers' dollars are not being wasted as a result of government incompetence.
I am looking forward to this bill going to committee. We certainly do not want to hold it up. Transport is going to be having its initial meeting this week and I want it to have some legislation to work with. I am not going to say any more on this issue, but I want to make these things clear to the government, to the minister, and to the parliamentary secretary who I know will be at the transport committee. In spite of the fact that through democratic reform we did not want to see parliamentary secretaries in committees, they are going to be there. We are going to take them to task and ensure that proper legislation is put in place.