Yes, I have a last one. We'll keep pressing for what we think is right.
This speaks more to Mr. Jean's “air quality”. This is an amendment that in a sense replaces NDP-17. It affects some language. I have a copy here for the clerk to distribute. It takes up at the point of proposed section 103.07. This goes to the measure of national mandatory standards for air quality.
We heard from witnesses—and for some of us, having studied this for a while, it wasn't a surprise, but for many Canadians following the deliberations, it was surprising—that in Canada, while there's a thing called Canada-wide standards, and many might be led to believe that Canada-wide standards means this is the standard of air quality that each region or area must come to, in effect they're completely and purely voluntary. We know the nature of voluntary action when it comes to cleaning up our environment. It doesn't get us very far. It actually sends us backwards.
On the amendment that we'll be moving, there are several pieces of substance. It does two significant things. One, it moves to national mandatory standards that then will take place in geographic zones. This is generally the way to think about air quality, that there must be standards met by each of these zones. It then adds in a sectoral element if a zone fails the test. If there's a national standard that's been agreed to and a standard agreed to in that zone, but the zone fails the test after a six-month testing, it then bumps down to the actual emitter level for them to start to clean up their act.
So if an area such as, in Mr. Watson's case, around Windsor, if that's taken as a natural climatic airshed zone and a standard is set for air quality, which I know is an issue in Windsor right now—and I don't mean to pick on Mr. Watson—and that standard is then broken, it then moves down to the actual emitter's level, the point-source emitter's level, to say we have broken the standard for these specific air quality elements.
These elements, just to keep this in mind, Chair, are all named and delineated in this bill already. This is something the government is moving towards. They've named the actual pollutants. It says it bumps down to the emitter level and then the emitters must come on board and start to limit those very elements that the government has already named in their bill. We think this does much to strengthen the efforts that the government has already made on air contaminants. It moves further than amendment L-21.1, which we have here before us. It both cleans up this portion of the bill and also, if I may, cleans up the air.
I believe the clerk has copies of it. They're being copied. I won't say any more.