Madam Speaker, well, it is simply put.
In my speech, I talked about a project that was started and should be in operation, but is not because of a reassessment that is going on. They start a project, they could get people in the north employed, and now it will have to be reassessed from square one. Now we have lost a whole year up north in mining. The company has put hundreds of thousands of dollars into human resources. The economic spinoff up north has been lost for that year, or 18 months. Why would we support this revision to Bill C-17?
We want to get people working in this country. This could be addressed if we had an exemption for projects from reassessment when their authorization is renewed or amended, unless there has been a significant change to the project. I stress the words “significant change”. Some of the changes are not very significant, and so we should be able to continue on and people to continue to work. However, if we have to start over from square one, it is ridiculous. On the economics, Yukon, in this case, and first nations up there are the ones who are suffering.