Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments and support of what we are attempting to do here. This is in response to the leadership that has been shown in British Columbia, particularly from the first nations, but also from the environment community, and now the mayors as well, and at a minimum 75% of British Columbians.
Every poll that has been done on this issue has shown that more than three-quarters of British Columbians say that an exclusion zone is not going to do it. It is not enough. It is voluntary and not strong enough. We need a mandatory ban on supertankers on the coast.
To correct the timeline for the hon. member, it was an NDP provincial government in 1972, the Dave Barrett government, that actually pushed for this moratorium to be put in place. The concern we had in 1972 when this ball got rolling was the federal government simply verbally stated there should be no supertankers off the coast but it never wrote anything down. That must be a regret for the hon. member.
More important and much more recent in history, the hon. member for Victoria, who in massive public consultation with environment groups, such as Dogwood Initiative, put a motion before the House in 2007, which said that there must be a zone. I welcome the Liberals to the New Democrats' fight here.
There are letters from environment ministers in the former Liberal government which say that this moratorium does not apply to any shipping supertanker traffic. That was the Liberal government in 2005.
I wonder if there is any regret from the Liberals in saying that we should have written something down, and then as recently as 2005 denying the need for the existence of a mandatory non-voluntary exclusion zone for tanker traffic.