Mr. Speaker, I am hearing a lot of talk about delays as though they were a bad thing. However, no one is talking about the reason for these delays. They are forgetting to say that constructive work is being done behind the scenes.
We rarely, if ever, hear our Conservative colleagues talk about the fact that these waterways, these rivers and lakes, are like a body with different connecting parts. I am thinking of the Richelieu River, which is the heart of my riding. Many rivers that are no longer protected connect to it.
What is more, the Montreal-Portland pipeline passes under the river. Signs to that effect are placed along the length of the river. This infrastructure has been there since 1960. Given that the environmental regulations that the member opposite seems to think serve only to cause delays did not exist at the time, we now have aging infrastructure that could leak oil and gas into the bottom of the river when the flow of oil is reversed.
I would like to know how the members opposite can have such a lack of understanding of the consequences, impacts and domino effect that the absence of these protections will have on our waterways.