Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to rise and speak on the St. Lawrence River and just how important that river has been, not only for us today, as a nation, but also for tomorrow and the days before. I think of the history of Canada and the important role the St. Lawrence River played to our overall development as a nation. My ancestors came from that whole area of the St. Lawrence River, and many of them would have been on the St. Lawrence and witnessed, even back then, issues related to the shoreline.
The point is that, whether it is my ancestors who lived close to the St. Lawrence River and used the St. Lawrence river or today, there have always been concerns in regard to the shoreline. However, I think that the overall support in the general direction of how the St. Lawrence has contributed to Canada being the nation it is today is overwhelmingly positive. We have seen economic development and community development that has been to the great benefit of all.
It is interesting that the member opposite said that this is completely a federal responsibility, yet if we take a look at part of his argument, it was that commercial vessels are using the St. Lawrence. He referenced speed as one of those issues that causes a problem, and the wakes are a problem. I acknowledge that, but one of the actions that was taken by the government a while back was to recognize that the province and Ottawa needed to work together, and that is why they put together a committee of both provincial and federal reps. I will go into a little more detail on that shortly.
I wanted to pick up a bit in terms of why this is, and that is why I posed the question I did to the member. This has been an issue for a long time, as I have talked about. I do not question that at all, but the report itself was tabled almost a year and a half ago. If we take a look at the Order Paper, what we will see is pages and pages of reports that have been brought to the standing committees. If one wanted to, they could stand up every day for the rest of the session until the next election and bring forward concurrence requests.
I question whether that is the most valuable use of the time here on the floor of the House of Commons. It takes nothing away from how important this issue is for all of Canada, because it is a trading corridor. Products that come in through the St. Lawrence are distributed throughout the country. All of Canada benefits if we have a healthy St. Lawrence River, so I do not question the importance of the subject matter.
I am surprised, as the member made reference, that he has raised it in question period. I do not know how I would have missed that, because there are not very many question periods I have missed over the years. I will have to wait and see, but I am glad he raised the issue during question period, and hopefully he will continue to do so, because it is an important issue. That is one of the reasons there is such a detailed response to the report from the department, and I am going to talk about that response, but before I do that, the question I had posed to the member was this: “Why today?”
Since we have been back in session, I think it is fair to say that there has been marginal time on government legislation. Initially, the Conservative Party would go into the Order Paper, look through the pages and pages of reports, and start taking out concurrence reports in order for the government not to be able to talk about legislation. Now, if we were not talking about the report today, we would be talking about the privilege issue that was raised by the Conservative Party.
Yesterday, I posed a question, and I think it is a legitimate question, in terms of the St. Lawrence and the many issues in the reports that are on the Order Paper. Yes, they are important issues, and there are many ways they can be dealt with, but is there a concentrated effort to prevent legislation from being debated? Whether it is the Citizenship Act that the Bloc, NDP and Liberal members support and the Conservatives oppose, or the military court that every member inside this House supports, the legislative agenda is being held up.
I am debating whether or not it is actually a privilege issue, which is supposed to be supreme in terms of the order of debates. However, it is being utilized as a tool of obstruction and not the privilege itself. If I had a choice of talking about what the member is raising with the St. Lawrence River—