Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate that the motion that's been tabled with the committee today is related to the study in front of us. My colleagues have highlighted the fact that we have a whole theme within the study dedicated to the topic of waste water. My questions were related to waste water as well.
I think it undercuts the ability of the committee to hold our hearing today if this motion takes precedence over questioning the witnesses. The goal of this meeting was to hear from witnesses and to gain information that will help us with the scoping of this study.
As much as I'm fascinated by what happened in Montreal—4,000 kilometres from where I live—10 years ago, and I'm sure it's very pertinent to this committee's work, I'm not sure that I'm in a place where I can vote for a motion that expresses a specific opinion to the House.
My preference would be that we deal with this over the course of the study and look at recommendations in the report that would remedy underlying problems that may contribute to similar situations in the future. We can do forensic work and look at what happened 10 years ago, but in my view, that has utility only if it informs what we're going to do in the future.
I think very much that it's the kind of focus we could bring to this study to make it useful to Canadians and to the protection of fresh water.
Having said that, I'm going to move a motion to end debate on the motion before us in the interest of returning to the work of the committee on the freshwater study.