Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to comment on that again, because as I said during my comments in the speech, it was ridiculous. We had three meetings set aside at two hours each. Two sets of two hours to hear witnesses and then two hours to deal with this mammoth bill and for clause-by-clause consideration.
We did not have nearly enough time to hear from Canadians. Those who made submissions to our committee actually commented on the fact that they did not have enough time to give us thoughtful and in-depth expert opinion.
We were fortunate that some of the members I quoted, from Ecojustice, from CELA, from Greenpeace, gave us superb testimony, but my goodness, when we are talking about legislation that potentially deals with the equivalent of a Fukushima-type accident, which happened in Japan and cost $250 billion to $500 billion for cleanup, surely we should have taken our time in making sure that we have this piece of legislation right.
This is not only about taxpayers being on the hook for cleanup, that for sure is part of the equation, but equally important, as MPs in this House, it is our responsibility to make sure that we have legislation in place that prevents those accidents, those spills, from happening in the first place.
I am proud to serve in the caucus of a leader who was the environment minister in Quebec, who has years of experience and a proven track record on sustainable development, on environmental protection.
We had expertise to give and the time just did not allow us to do that job as fully as we would have liked.