Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong in that paradigm with respect to rail transportation.
Right now, there are long-term contracts—from five to seven years—for products to be transported by rail. The industry tells people they must choose, when in fact, there is no choice. The industry says that it wants to move forward on both fronts. There will be more tankers filled with bitumen on the tracks. In addition, the industry wants more pipelines to transport and probably export the majority of the resource, especially in the case of the energy east pipeline. This is something made up by people who, I imagine, want to avoid a fundamental debate on whether we truly want to base our economy of the future on maximizing the transportation of a non-renewable resource. There is something wrong there.
Something really blew me away, especially because it was that a Liberal colleague who just asked me a question. He said that one positive aspect of the bill was that the National Energy Board could now focus on the people affected by the pipelines. He said that its mandate was not limited to the safety of the pipeline itself. This means that during the time of the Liberals, the act provided only for the protection of the pipeline and not the protection of those who lived around it. They allowed that to go on for decades. Unbelievable.