Madam Speaker, I am glad that my hon. colleague from Alberta has been to our beautiful region, and I hope he comes back. I hope when he comes back, he will see that the government has supported these great Canadians he talked about. People are working two and three jobs to afford to live in the Pacific Rim because of the cost of living, yet they put aside their valuable recreation time to get out and clean the beaches, protect the ocean, and do the government's job when it fails them.
We need to at least have their backs. These volunteers went out and collected all this debris, and the government made a promise that it was going to airlift it out and remove it. The government turned around and said it did not have any money for that. We need to empower our volunteers, make sure we follow through with our commitments, and make sure we have funding to support cleanup initiatives, especially when it comes to volunteers.
The amount of excuses that the government piled up instead of doing its job are absolutely embarrassing, as it should be to everyone in the House and the country. For the government to say that some of this garbage was from marine debris cleanup and some from other stuff, is just endless. The ocean protection plan needs to actually do what it is supposed to do, and that is protect our oceans.