Mr. Speaker, having been a municipal councillor I am familiar with some of those debates. Urban developments were taking place and DFO would say an environmental assessment had to be done. Sometimes those are not easy things to go through. Sometimes those debates can become polarized, but it was very important that they be done.
The essential point is that if we allow a downloading and if we allow these agreements to take place, they will not be transparent. We have seen that in many other areas. People may feel that they are getting more local control, but in actual fact it ends up that nobody is in control. There is no accountability. That is why the federal government needs to have a strong presence in these kinds of resources to make sure that there is accountability, transparency and public oversight.