Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, and he is a friend, the parliamentary secretary. Let me give him an example right now that is not hypothetical.
None of the wonderful press releases he has mentioned has done a single thing to allow the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada to have a budget sufficient enough to hold the meetings it is required to hold by law. It is supposed to assess and monitor species at risk along a continuum from threatened to critically endangered, but these top-notch scientists have to meet to do that. The committee did not have a budget to meet, so it has gone from two meetings required a year down to one, and it is not going to have enough time to plow through the backlog of species that need attention, need recovery plans and need habitat attention.
At the same time that the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada cannot meet, we see a discussion paper that says maybe it is okay to lose the southern resident killer whales. It is not acceptable.