Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to discuss this important bill. It is a real opportunity to talk about issues that are important to our communities.
The government has been incredibly ambitious with this bill, talking about the possibility of launching rockets into space from Canada and developing a national space program by 2028. Yet, in front of us we have a bill that is very easy reading because, at only 10 pages, it sketches out the briefest of details around what that program might look like. It is going to be a challenge for the transport committee to think about how to operationalize this and how to think about asking the government where it is heading on this.
One of the characteristics that is emerging from this government, which we really see in this bill, is a trend towards creating a new organization, putting together very thin details around it and then leaving it to the executive branch of government to sort out, with an incredible amount of discretion. What that does under these circumstances is create a real conundrum. It creates a situation where, as constructive members of a loyal opposition, we want to work with this government to realize the ambitions of Canada and to build Canada into the kind of country that we can all be proud of.
However, we find ourselves facing these situations without a lot of guidance from the government about where it wants to go. The ambitions associated with this bill are galactic, but the realities are closer to an abandoned—