Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend, the leader of the Green Party, weighing in. I am not surprised by her position on the precautionary principle, because she came from an environmental law background as an activist lawyer. We may agree on some things. We may disagree. However, I would refer her to the fact that back when it was discussed in Rio, irreparable harm was the consideration before this non-certain, unscientific approach would be advanced, the better-safe-than-sorry approach. What concerns me now is that it is in a list of enumerated grounds, including social and economic and the intersection of sex and gender. I am not sure what those things have to do with preserving fish stocks, but it shows that the government is ideological, and it is doing things not based on science.
This is not the first time I have raised this. This is the third piece of legislation in about six months that, by stealth, is inserting a principle that is still quite controversial. I quoted the most cited American legal scholar, Professor Sunstein, who is very concerned about this approach. In fact, his latest book on the subject is called Laws of Fear, based on this principle.