I'll start. I don't know who wants to help me out on this one, but it's an important question, Mr. Chair.
Here are a couple of points.
These big liabilities especially are old. They do date back to a time when corporate expectations, shall we call it “social responsibility”, were different from what they are today. The expectation of polluter pay—some of those concepts—didn't exist way back when.
The second point I would make, and it's probably the reason you're concerned, is that when the health and safety of Canadians are at risk, the government is the ultimate risk-holder. If a corporation packs up and leaves, you can pursue various legal avenues and do what you have to do, but at the end of the day, often it's the government that's left holding the bag.
Of the unassessed sites, one thing that often comes up is the question, who is responsible? It could be the federal government, it could be another level of government, or it could be the private sector. In part of the assessment process, one of the key question is who is responsible. If you're into joint ventures and partnerships, sometimes it's shared and sometimes there's a debate. If you go back to—what's a good example?—the Sydney tar ponds, there has been a lot of discussion about them. Is the responsibility federal? Is it provincial? Is it shared? There was a process not only to assess what the clean-up cost is, but who is responsible. That is part of the assessment process.
I know it's cold comfort to say that we own these things now. That's probably not fair from a “what's just to the Canadian taxpayer” perspective, but at the end of the day this stuff has to be cleaned up and, because of the rules at the time, the Canadian government and the taxpayer are the ultimate risk-holder.