Mr. Speaker, I certainly echo the comments of the hon. member for St. John's East in lamenting that we do not have an independent board for worker safety.
I would also point out for my hon. colleague that both the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board have embedded within the legislation a conflict of interest in that the regulator for environment and for worker safety is also mandated to expand oil and gas production.
This inherent conflict of interest made it very inappropriate that both the Harper Conservatives and the current Liberal government have embedded an environmental assessment, but the offshore petroleum boards can also run the environmental assessment hearings as well as promoting the expansion of oil and gas.
I think it is unlikely my hon. friend for Sturgeon River—Parkland would agree with me, but I find the record of the government entirely on the side of expanding oil and gas in the offshore of both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, failing to provide the kind of independent regulators that were put in place in the United States after the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the Horizon disaster, and in the case of the Cougar helicopter crash, failing to protect the workers.
I wonder if my hon. colleague has considered it from the point of view of this embedded conflict of interest.