Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take part in the debate on Bill C-52. I listened carefully to my colleague from British Columbia on the whole issue of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I can certainly echo similar experiences in my riding of Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette of actions of the bureaucrats at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Unfortunately, too many of these regulations force the department to operate in a manner that is unaccountable to anyone except itself. The people in my riding understand that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a relevant role to play in terms of environment enhancement to ensure that the fisheries remain intact in the future. There are huge bodies of water in my riding and fish are very important to the people who live there.
Unfortunately, because of the way the regulations operate they make a lot of people angry, sometimes because they do not understand the history of the riding and how real things happen. For example, the installation of culverts and ditches is always a sore point with the rural municipalities. Fisheries officers from who knows where, possibly from academia, usually inform the municipalities that they have to take the culverts out. They are not allowed to install them without studies, which incur costs. The same thing happens when bridges are being built. Engineering studies have to be done. It increases the costs for the rural municipalities.
We know that regulations tend to get out of hand. With Bill C-52 perhaps we need to look at less regulation and do away with some of the regulations that exist in the current legislation rather than add to the regulations. I would like to hear the comments of my colleague from the west coast.