Madam Speaker, as is the tradition, I have been given five minutes to clean up after the presentation of the bill after an hour in the House.
I listened very carefully to all the interventions made in the House today. To my friend in the Bloc, I am still trying to figure out what a ship going up and down the St. Lawrence has to do with brownfields but I take his points.
My friend with the Canadian Alliance Party indicated or assumed that the government was not doing its job on the environment. Through my experience from 1988 to 1993 in opposition, the Conservative government of the day did precious little on environmental concerns compared to what this federal Liberal government has done since 1993 to the present date. It is quite extraordinary and outstanding what has been done on issues of the environment under a series of different environmental ministers.
My colleague, the parliamentary secretary, will probably not leave his seat and allow me another opportunity to ask for unanimous consent to move this bill along for more than just an hour. I jest because he is a friend. Quite seriously, to my hon. friend who is standing in as a parliamentary secretary, I know he has to represent the government's point of view and I know he has a job to do. I have done that job myself.
However I would ask him to take back the message to the officials that Bill C-19 does not address the need of cost assessment as outlined in my bill. If we have a project we want to proceed with then we go out and do an assessment. Then we can get funding for the project.
Bill C-305 would amend the act and take it back a step so the opportunity of financing would begin at the assessment stage. Doing that would involve not just federal, provincial or municipal money but also tax money. Also the private sector would be invited to play a role and to network with levels of government to spend the money, make it possible, make it happen and pay for it at first blush.
There was an interesting use of language in the government's rebuttal. The word altered was used as opposed to my words of expanding the existing registry.
As addressed by the government, Bill C-305 says that we fear this paper registry versus the Internet or computer registry, and that a paper registry does not work. What bill is perfect? If we had perfect bills we would not have to spend time in the House debating them, making amendments at committee, taking them to report stage in the House and then making amendments at report stage. No bill is perfect. We would make those adjustments from paper to computer.
By the way, and the hon. member might pass this along to the government, even the new Internet based registry under Bill C-19 would still only list environmental assessment projects, not suspected or presently unreported sites that my particular bill would do. Maybe we will have to make an amendment to Bill C-19 in order to make that possible.
I look forward to the reforms that are being discussed and may take place shortly in the work of the House. However what harm is there in permitting a private member's bill, which takes place in an hour outside of regular government business, to be discussed more and to have a second and third hour of debate in the House? It could be in a stretch that might take six months. Then it could end at a parliamentary committee where the bill would be addressed, amended, clarified or even thrown out if the government, with its majority on committees, saw fit. What harm is there in moving the bill along?
Remember that a private member's bill takes hours upon hours of work to formulate. Then it goes to the legislative process. I thank Debra Bulmer at legislative services because she spent hours looking through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to make the appropriate amendments to respond to what it was I wanted to see in the act vis-à-vis brownfields. I thank her for her hard work.
I ask hon. members, with all the hours that were spent in developing, researching and drawing up the appropriate measures in the bill, to give this private member's bill a shot. There is no harm in it. It can be killed at committee if it has to be killed, and if not at committee at third reading in the House.
In closing I ask one more time, and I may know the answer to this already, that the House give unanimous consent to make the bill votable.