Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge at the commencement of my remarks that when I first started into this process I rose in the House and I said: "If the minister is serious and if we have the opportunity to go through the whole process, I am looking forward to her and her department coming forward and saying yes, this is the collective wisdom of the committee and we are prepared to act on it". I said that if she did that I would congratulate her, so today I congratulate her.
I realize as a Reformer that I have to be careful, but I would like to make special note of the chair of the committee, the hon. member for Davenport. I believe he and I share a mutual respect for each other, for the fact that we have hard opinions, strong opinions and different opinions. In spite of that he did a masterful job of bringing together all of the opinions that were available through this arduous process. He is absolutely to be commended for his work.
In addition, taking some of the responsibility for this, the member for Comox-Alberni and myself absolutely held out, dug in our heels and would not be moved. I am now very pleased to see that the minister has announced that we will fund these initiatives within existing resources. I take some small amount of credit for that on behalf of the Reform Party. There were people on the committee who had a differing point of view to that.
I would like to read from the minister's prepared comments: "The government will include a definition of sustainable development in the Auditor General Act and ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account in all Auditor General reports to Parliament". She will know that extreme environmentalists would see the term sustainable development as being an oxymoron, in other words the two things do not necessarily fit together. The responsible industrialist, the entrepreneur, does not see it that way. I must tell this House that neither does the Reform Party.
The Reform Party sees sustainable development as being an absolutely achievable goal. However, one of the difficulties is what does sustainable development mean. That is a very difficult question. I have some small bit of concern because the minister in her comments today in the unprepared part of her speech said that there will be an onus on the companies to prove their process is safe.
One of the concerns that I have is that I do not know what that means either. In other words, are we going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by becoming so wrapped up in saying we cannot do anything that we will not be able to have any responsible development of the resources that we have in Canada? It is a concern.
I would like to read into my speech from the Reform Party blue sheet. We have gone from mauve to purple to red to green to grey. The Reform Party has always stayed with blue.
The Reform Party supports ensuring that all Canadians and their descendants dwell in a clean and healthy environment. The party supports sustainable development because-
This is the most important part.
-without economic development and the income generated therefrom, the environment will not be protected or enjoyed.
That is where the hon. member for Davenport and myself differ. From his perspective I believe I would be fair in characterising his point of view to say that we must protect the environment before we get into economic development. I suggest if we take a look at what is happening in the third world where the countries do not have proper economic activity, where they do not have the resources to protect the environment, we end up with absolutely atrocious situations in the third world in terms of pollution. They do not have the resources to protect the environment.
I say again that the Reform Party states that without economic development and the income generated therefrom, the environment will not be protected or enjoyed.
This has been a consistent position of the Reform Party contrary to what has been said. I am sure that the minister would never have said anything disparaging about the Reform Party, but maybe there are some people in the Liberal Party who have said some things that perhaps have not been totally accurate in characterising where the Reform Party is coming from. I would like to read in exactly where we are coming from on the issue of sustainable development. This by the way has been in our blue book since 1991.
The Reform Party supports the view that environmental considerations must carry equal weight with economic, social and technical considerations in the development of a project.
The Reform Party supports the integration of environmental and economic objectives in management philosophy, structure, procedures, planning and all decision-making matters involving economic and environmental issues in which the federal government has constitutional jurisdiction.
The Reform Party supports the initiation of a public education program of environmentally conscious purchasing. The federal government and private sector should cause their purchasing departments to be environmentally conscious in all their purchasing.
The Reform Party supports the federal government in taking leadership in developing a new discipline integrating economics and the environment.
This has been the position of the Reform Party. I cannot possibly imagine that the responsible members of the Reform Party would ever move from those very sustainable and responsible positions.
However, there is a battle for the hearts and minds of people over the issue of responsible resource management and development and probably no place more strongly than in the province of British Columbia.
This battle for the hearts and minds of citizens is waged by people who seem to get on to the extreme. We have to realize that, just as in society, people, human beings, have a finite life. For example, in British Columbia the flashpoint is trees. Trees have a finite life.
What has to be decided is what we are going to do with the fibre. Are we going to let it fall to the ground in decay? Are we going to harvest it? Are we going to be handling it responsibly? There is this battle for the hearts and minds of people.
I will tell a quick story. I was at a meeting attended by people from all over Canada in my constituency a few weeks ago. A prairie farmer came up to me. He was very proud of the fact that he was going out of his way to save all the forests in British Columbia. He was one of the largest contributors to one of the more extreme environmental groups that have single-handedly shut down logging operations, put loggers out of work, and created all sorts of havoc in situations where the companies within the last five years have turned around and managed their affairs and the affairs of the forests very responsibly. I suggested to him that maybe I should start to contribute to a fund that would advocate returning all the prairies to grasslands. How would he feel about that? Of course he became very incensed about it.
One issue in the entire area of the environment is to get good, quality information out. I congratulate the minister and the committee chairman for their effort to this point. I look forward to the Reform Party supporting the initiative.