Mr. Speaker, I will return to the intervention by the member for Edmonton Griesbach. He asked how the government thought it could ever get another pipeline built under this new environmental assessment regime. The way it will that is through this bill. The minister is giving herself the power to completely ignore the new assessment process.
She talks about the Harper government having gutted the environmental review process. The gutting occurred because the decision-making procedure became totally political. It was being taken at the cabinet level, and politicians did not have any obligation to listen to scientists and heed the evidence.
The problem with this bill is that this prerogative is completely preserved. In fact, it is given only to the minister and not even to cabinet as a whole.
How can she stand in this place and say that she is approving the process when the government does not even need to apply the process to any projects, and it retains the right, initiated by the Harper government, to completely disregard the evidence and the science?