Madam Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to address an important issue for my constituents. Specifically I rise with respect to the offshore oil and gas moratorium that exists right now in the Hecate Strait off the Queen Charlotte Islands, sometimes known as the Haida Gwaii.
I chose to speak again on this issue, as I have raised it a number of times in question period and perhaps the rhetoric is too strong and the emotions too high for the minister to take the chance to offer me a direct and clear answer. I seek an answer again because there is much confusion and there are mixed signals coming from the government on this important issue.
Just recently I was talking to members of the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands, who are engaged in a battle over resources allocation, in this case timber supply. This issue also speaks to this control.
Recently the government engaged in three processes to look at lifting the offshore oil and gas moratorium. Two of them have come back very conclusively letting the government know without a doubt that the people engaged in, first, the Priddle panel, and second, the first nations engagement process, are decisively against lifting the moratorium for offshore oil and gas exploration in Hecate Strait. Seventy-five per cent of the people engaged in the Priddle panel's investigation said not to lift the moratorium and 100% of the first nations consulted said not to do this.
This is about the ability of first nations and people in the northwest of British Columbia to have and maintain the right to control and make decisions about the resources that affect their lives and their futures.
The government said that there is a need for more and sound science, but I will quote from the report:
There was near consensus among participants that there are significant information gaps regarding biophysical [baseline] data and environmental and socio-economic impacts for the [Queen Charlotte Region]....
This is significantly important. One of the questions I hope the parliamentary secretary's notes address is how much the government will be investing in this baseline research, in this need to cover off the abhorrent lack of knowledge that we have of this region before any concept of seismic testing or any far-fetched notion of drilling could exist.
There is also a question of certainty. Industry and people who live in resource-based economies are often looking for some sort of certainty within legislation.
The government will say that it is endeavouring to set up a regulatory environment similar to the east coast's, which will provide certainty and safety. The recent oil spill off the east coast and many of the other spills that have existed in other regulatory environments that were claimed to be safe are disproving the ability of that assurance to make people feel safe about the ocean, the most important thing in that area of the world.
The last question I would put to the parliamentary secretary, and I am sure his notes will address this, is whether there is good faith existing on this file, whether there is good faith on the part of the government. Or is there a sincere effort to have negotiations with the province of British Columbia, which is rabid for this project, regardless of how inconsistent the proof is coming back and regardless of how little industry is actually interested?
Is the federal government engaged in this process of setting up a regulatory environment? If so, does that not speak against what I heard from the minister when I asked him about this in the House? It was on the day that the Kyoto accord came into effect, by the way, and he said the government will have full consultation with the government and with the industry stakeholders, until, it seems, it gets the conclusion it wants, which seems to my mind to be that it would like to lift the moratorium.
I would like the parliamentary secretary to clear the air on this, to provide certainty for people and to return the feeling and strong sentiment that people in the region are ultimately the ones who will control the risk associated with resource extraction.