Mr. Speaker, again in no way did I intend to imply that all regulations are bad. Of course there have to be regulations. What I was suggesting in my response a minute ago is the fact that very frequently people who are opposed to an approved project will find some other way of thwarting it by using regulations.
With respect I ask members of the House is it responsible, is it rational, is it reasonable? I quote the Auditor General when he says there were $4.1 billion invested by industry in regulations that were duplications, in regulations that were changing and regulations that were suspect.
I cite as an example, not necessarily federal regulations although they relate to provincial regulations, in the province of British Columbia some bright light decided we were going to be having zero as the level we had to achieve on a particular contaminant that was coming out of the pulping process. This figure was arrived at from the blue sky as it were.
Industry has invested countless hundreds of millions of dollars trying to achieve this and we now discover it is not necessary to achieve it. Should we now be paying back the industry? We do not have the resources to do that.