Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Surrey North and welcome him to the debate, a debate the Conservatives and Liberals have decided to be absent from, somehow thinking that marine safety and aviation safety are things that do not need to have any comment from the government or the third party. It is fascinating, but it is their choice.
The interest I have here is that this is a small measures bill. It seeks to change some liability. It seeks to toughen up some of the more peripheral issues that are around shipping oil, particularly by marine through supertankers. However, it does not address some of the things that my friend talked about earlier, which are all the cuts we have seen, not just straight up money to the Coast Guard and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce any of the new laws that we bring forward. We do not see the government attaching any money to these prospects. Therefore, what is the value of a law if the government does not intend to enforce it? That is a fair question.
The second piece is that the government fails to understand that by not accepting any of the witness testimony and not accepting any of the ideas that come from the official opposition, it keeps making bad laws. The way we know that is that these laws keep getting struck down in court. There was one just last week.
Refusing to listen to any criticism is an arrogance that does not work for government and it does not work for taxpayers, because none of these things actually come to pass.