Mr. Speaker, I would like to address that quickly and then get to my friend's other points. There have been many iterations of this conversation in legislation put forward by her, myself, and others.
This is very specific, based on the recommendations and advice we got from the people who live in the northwest. They are my friends, my neighbours, and the municipal and first nations leaders, and they prescribed it very specifically. The elders also spoke to me from the first nations communities about the importance of having some connectivity, some basic connection between the values that first nations people hold in the stewardship of the land.
To the other points about the aspirational, we have seen the Conservative government shrink and greatly limit the amount of consultation that can happen on any of the pipelines going across Canada, rather than welcoming Canadians into the debate and hearing the wisdom, intelligence and passion of people who live along the proposed routes of any of these pipelines. It could be the west-east pipeline, Kinder Morgan into Vancouver, or gateway. This bill seeks to open up the conversation, bring people in, and show them some respect.
The last piece is to finally say that value added should be a component of any consideration of any resource project that the government faces. Why a government would be so infatuated and content with raw export, leaving the cost of clean-up behind while sending the jobs off to some other country, is beyond me. It is certainly not in Canadian interests. It may be in the Chinese government's and other governments' interests, but it is certainly not in our own.
That is what the three components of the bill would do, and that is what it seeks to accomplish, finally, through legislation.