Madam Speaker, when I was elected as the member for Calgary Signal Hill in 2015, if I were asked what issues I might be speaking to in the House of Commons during my time as a member of Parliament, I doubt that the Fisheries Act would have been at the top of the list of the things I thought I would be making a few comments on.
I feel compelled to say a few words tonight, because this legislation is so similar to so many other bills the government has brought forward, and so many of those bills impact my riding and my province. I go back to the fact that Calgary Signal Hill is hardly anywhere near an ocean. In fact, our largest body of water is the Glenmore Reservoir, which supplies water to the city of Calgary. As my colleague just mentioned, we have a lot of ditches and puddles. If this legislation impacts ditches and puddles the way I believe it would, then it would impact our province and my riding.
It was mentioned earlier by my colleague from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa that this piece of legislation would be a haven for environmental lawyers. If I follow that track and ask who was responsible for funding this Liberal Party in the last election and who was responsible for putting them here, there were a great many environmental activists, environmental lawyers, and all the left-leaning environmentalists who voted for the Liberal government, and now it is payback time.
Those environmental lawyers who were integral to electing people like the member for Calgary Centre are now being paid back for that support in 2015. When the Conservatives form the government in 2019 again, we will get rid of some of this legislation that is nothing more that the government trying to turn back the pages of success from Stephen Harper's time in office.
This legislation is another example of what we are seeing in the energy industry, where the government is bringing in legislation that would do nothing but add layers and layers of regulatory hurdles that in this case, fishermen are going to have to deal with, the same way the industry in Alberta is dealing with regulatory hurdles.
Later this evening we are going to be talking about a bill that would directly impact the energy industry in Alberta, a bill that if given the opportunity, I want to make a few comments on. That is why all of these pieces of legislation are intertwined. They are all part of an agenda to undo much of the good work that was done previously, but it is also payback time for Liberal supporters in the last election.
I had the opportunity, during the time the member for Cariboo—Prince George was having health issues, to sit on the committee that was studying this bill. Every time a group that was supportive of this legislation was asked for scientific evidence as to why this legislation was necessary, it did not have an answer. Every time a local industry appeared before the committee and expressed concerns about the bill, it was washed over by the Liberal members of the committee. Liberals voted down all the amendments that were put forward.
It was not the members of the Liberal caucus from the Maritimes and Atlantic Canada, who would be impacted by this legislation, who are bringing forth these terrible pieces of legislation. It is the bureaucrats in the Prime Minister's Office who have another agenda, the so-called green agenda, that is filtered through every piece of legislation that comes into the House.
It is those kinds of initiatives we consistently see from the government that get MPs like me up in the House to make some comments. It is so bad for the entire country, not just Atlantic Canada and the parts of the country that happen to be on the coast.
Now, I know members from the government will stand up and say that the Conservatives do not care about our oceans, fish, and whatnot. My colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, is going to speak in a little while. If there is someone who knows about the environment and is an expert on environmental matters, it is this particular gentleman and colleague in the House. I can hardly wait to hear what he has to say on this particular legislation.
This bill would also establish a number of advisory panels. Again, the Liberals have become very good at establishing advisory panels and appointing a bunch of their friends to them. I reflect back on a committee the government appointed about coal. This committee is travelling across the country today, meeting with so-called communities impacted by the decision to phase out coal. How many members of that 12-person committee actually come from coal communities in this country? There is one. The rest are all bureaucrats, environmentalists, and supporters of the Liberal government. What kind of a report do we think is going to come back? I am afraid that when these advisory panels are established by the Liberal government, they are going to come back with those same kinds of recommendations. They will be nothing but driven by environmentalists and the left-leaning parties in this country, and they are going to do nothing for our fishing industry or our environment.
I will just make a couple of other comments. My colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka talked about so-called transparency and the government's attempt to camouflage some of its activities under the heading of transparency. I do not think there has ever been a government elected in this country that has been less transparent than the current government. Let us talk about transparency.
Let us talk about the carbon tax cover-up. The government talks about transparency, yet it will not reveal to Canadians what the carbon tax is going to cost families. Even though it actually has that information, it will not release it. If the government talks about transparency, it is obviously not walking the walk. That is a good example. I suspect that this bill would not do anything for transparency in the area of fisheries.
Those are a few comments I wanted to make. I have no intention of supporting this particular piece of legislation, much like most that comes before the House from the government. I look forward to the vote to see how members from Atlantic Canada on the Liberal backbenches will vote on this particular legislation. I hope they are all here to vote when the time comes, because we want to make sure that when we go to Atlantic Canada in the next election to talk to constituents in those ridings, we can point out how the Atlantic MPs from the Liberal government voted on this harmful piece of legislation.
