Mr. Speaker, I do not think it will come as any surprise to the member for Cardigan that I completely agree with him on this point. We need to look at past and recent instances of failings on the part of search and rescue operations and inspection operations in our country.
I will give the example of when we recently talked of possibly cutting the Maritime search and rescue centre in Quebec City. We closed the one in St. John's, Newfoundland to have it centred now only in Halifax. There was a lack of resources to respond to an emergency call. There is a service of last defence that exists in this world and it is located in Italy. It is not meant as a front-line service. It is meant as a service of desperation, if no one else can answer a distress call. Canada, a G7 country, was unable to take the distress call. We had to send it to Italy to a person who had no idea of the geography, who did not master the language. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Atlantic Canada, an Italian would have a hard time understanding the accent.
We need to know that the services are available for our front-line workers. Frankly, the government is falling flat. The Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves in this regard, and they have a lot to prove to bring the respect of our workers back to the government. We need to ensure that the government understands the risk these people are under and this may be a tool in the right direction, but it is only one tool. We need the resources, and that is what is lacking. Perhaps the government could consider putting binding resources in the bill that would make it much more palatable.