Mr. Speaker, I would just like to mention one thing to my colleague. At the start of his speech, he stated that he had the consent of the House. I would like my colleague from Lévis—Bellechasse to understand that he will have the consent of the House when we vote on the bill. First, the bill must be referred to a committee that will make amendments. I would like my colleague to understand that the Conservative Party does not have a majority on the committee. Thus, the bill will be amended and we hope that the other opposition parties will agree. We will see how the Conservative Party votes after we have amended the bill.
Naturally, this leads me to ask the following question. Does he not find it strange that today we have a bill which, early on, in clause 5, states that “International bridges and tunnels are declared to be works for the general advantage of Canada”, in other words, under federal jurisdiction? This is already spelled out in the Constitution.
Why are we bringing this up today? I would like to suggest a small exercise to my colleague from Lévis—Bellechasse. It is because the federal government has divested itself of its responsibilities over the years. It gave us a nice statement about marine transportation but the federal government has divested itself of its responsibilities. It is no longer responsible for ports—except for some designated ports— having turned them over to local authorities. In addition, the federal government divested itself of regional airports, wharfs and bridges, handing them over to independent managers.
As a result of 9/11, the federal government wishes to reappropriate these installations for security reasons. Could my colleague tell us today that the government would support an amendment to the bill that would force it to allocate funds specifically for international bridges and tunnels if more restrictive security measures were applied and that these measures would be paid for by the federal government?