--or Advocate or Digby? There are lights throughout coastal Canada that are an important part of the fabric of our society. We cannot afford to lose these lights at this time when we are in the best of times in this country through no fault of the government but simply through hard work by Canadian taxpayers. We can afford to save them.
I do not mean to make this into a partisan discussion, but if we can find money for other things, if we can find money to keep the government alive, then we can find the pittance, the almost pitiful amount of money, that it would take to keep these lights operating.
We are not looking for hundreds of millions of dollars. We are looking for legislation that would allow these lights to be protected in perpetuity. The current legislation is not enough to protect lighthouses.
Two federal bodies have the power to select and designate heritage lighthouses, the Federal Heritage Building Review Office and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, yet they have only managed to protect 19 of the over 500 lighthouses in this country. They have managed to partially protect only another 101.
I am not about to suggest that we can save every light and keep every light in Canada operational. I am suggesting that we can maintain the physical part of the light. The lights could be kept in them, and with technology today, the ability to keep the light on would be a lot cheaper than it was years ago. We have better systems and better technologies to keep the light on.
If we speak to the fishermen, the people who have traditionally used the light, we will learn that with all of the technology available there are still occasions when they depend upon that light for navigation or they depend for safety upon a foghorn associated with the light. When all technology fails and they are coming home on a stormy sea, in the fog or in the dark, a navigational beacon is important.
If any members have ever been in those circumstances, they know that the value of those lights is not to be taken lightly. They are still very important. They still have a safety value and they still have a navigational value, even with all the technology we have today.
I would sincerely urge all of my colleagues in this House to look at Bill S-14 and to look at the manner in which it was brought forth. I appreciate all the good work that was done in the Senate in fast tracking this bill. I appreciate the fact that it has made it to the floor of the House of Commons. But with a very tenuous grip on government, we may not have a lot of time, so I would urge everyone with all possible haste to make sure this bill passes and to get it to committee to make any changes that need to be made.
We are amenable to changes, but we are not amenable to not having this bill pass, to having more lights fall into the ocean where they can never be recovered and to having more lights sold to private individuals who have no responsibility for maintaining the outside physical structure of the light and keeping it as a heritage property, as we would with any other heritage property in Canada.
We are not asking for the sun and the moon and the stars. We are asking for this very good, solid, commonsense piece of legislation to be passed forthwith from the House, to go to committee and come back for third reading, so that we will be able to save at least one more lighthouse before the ravages of time and the sea take more of them from us.