Mr. Speaker, there is a range of things I would like to ask my colleague from Alberta.
Maybe I will focus in on the issue of confidence—and I would suggest it is overconfidence—that my friends on both the Conservative and Liberal sides have with respect to the National Energy Board itself.
The government brought an expert panel together to review what is going on with the National Energy Board, which has had its problems. Let us admit the obvious. The energy east pipeline hearings had to be shut down. The Kinder Morgan hearings had to be suspended. Both were because of conflicts of interest. People who were being placed on the National Energy Board to review the pipeline had previously worked for the pipeline companies themselves. That is called a captured regulator, where the regulator becomes too close, too forgiving, and approving of those it seeks to regulate. It does not work.
In that expert panel's report, it said that the National Energy Board faces a crisis of confidence. It went on later to say that, for a generation to come, Canadians have lost faith in the National Energy Board.
When Conservatives and Liberals agree on their terminology of social licence, that somehow the public is on board, one would have to question how they define it. There are 17 lawsuits out against this decision. The mayors in the regions most impacted by this pipeline are unanimous in their opposition. The first nations that the member talks about are misrepresented. I deal with many of them. When someone signs an agreement to discuss, it is not an agreement to the project itself. That is what has been misconstrued continuously.
I have a very simple question. We cannot rely on the NEB process. The current Prime Minister promised British Columbians and Canadians that he would review the pipeline under a valid process. He himself admitted that the one that had been put in place by Mr. Harper was inefficient, ineffective, and did not build the public confidence needed to have social licence.
The process is the same one that Harper had. This Prime Minister used it as well. Under all that review, there was no evidence put forward that a diluted bitumen spill could actually be cleaned up. Does my friend have any evidence to offer the people of Alberta, British Columbia, or anywhere in Canada that when a spill of diluted bitumen happens, in salt or fresh water, it can actually be cleaned up?
My Conservative colleagues want me to hurry, because they actually know the answer. It is no.