Mr. Speaker, that member is an invaluable member of our environment committee, and I enjoy working with him.
He did mention the navigable waters piece in Bill C-69. We need to make it very clear in the House that navigable waters is about navigation. It has nothing to do with the environment.
The previous government made those changes to the navigable waters act because government officials with sidearms were accosting farmers in fields who had dug a ditch that was classified as a waterway. They told our farmers not to touch or clean that ditch because they would be breaking the law. Imagine how farmers reacted. In my City of Abbotsford, the community I represent, farmers were livid about how the government approached this.
Another reason we moved forward with changes to the navigable waters legislation was because it was about navigation, not about the environment. The Liberal government seems to conflate those and has taken the navigable waters legislation and thrown it in the middle of Bill C-69, which is essentially an environmental piece of legislation. Does the member not understand that navigable waters is about protecting navigation? It should not cover minor waterways.
Why is his government so intent on changing and trying to remediate a piece of legislation that was actually working very well for those impacted by it?