Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a parallelism between the failure to have an independent safety regulator and the decision by the current administration to remove the independent environmental assessment from the same area of public policy, the offshore petroleum boards.
The offshore petroleum boards used to be covered by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and there used to be expertise within that body to conduct environmental reviews. That has now been ended, through previous omnibus budget bills. Now we have a reduced, diminished, and weakened EA process that is entirely up to the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia offshore petroleum boards.
By bringing in this much-delayed legislation for offshore worker protection, we have the same thing: the offshore petroleum boards are their own safety regulators.
I wonder if my hon. friend thinks there is something to this analysis, that there is a thematic effort to reduce regulatory efforts in protecting both workers and the environment in our offshore?