Mr. Speaker, my friend from Victoria's former provincial government, under the northern gateway pipeline project, that tried to abdicate the province's responsibility to do an environmental assessment. The reason I know this is because the Christy Clark government got sued all the way to Supreme Court and lost. The court said that it had obligations and responsibilities to the people of British Columbia to fulfill its constitutional obligations.
My friend has now moved his way up to the federal scene. It used to be that B.C. Liberals were considered to be Conservatives, but now B.C. Liberals are maybe federal Liberals. We can understand why people in British Columbia are sometimes confused as to what a Liberal is actually is. Maybe the two have merged. There is a pipeline going back and forth between the two in British Columbia at least.
My friend was in the cabinet of the government that tried to move away from its responsibility to consult with first nations, to do an environmental assessment, and were sued all the way to our highest court in the land and forced into action, at which time the Christy Clark government said that it approved it too. That was her environmental assessment of northern gateway. It did not pass muster then and that project failed.
We have such a similar circumstance here now. The only difference is we have a B.C. government that is interested in performing its constitutional responsibility and is asking the federal government to work with it to clarify each of our roles and responsibilities when it comes to energy transportation.
From his experience, would he encourage his new Liberal leader to learn from the mistakes of the past and refer to the court properly so we can have the clarity that so many people from both side of the House talk about, yet so many are unwilling to do what it takes to make that clarity come to reality?