For a young Acting Speaker like you to warn an old member like me, Mr. Speaker, I see that you have already learned your job well and I will make a point of complying with your directives.
Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke about a possible agreement with the pulp and paper industry and I commend her for that, because we denounce this continual duplication and overlap, we denounced it during the election campaign and we still denounce it continually here in the House. Our resolution for the opposition day yesterday talked about precisely that. Today, I think the Reform Party's resolution may be more specific and less broad but it also talks about eliminating this wasteful spending due to overlap.
In my riding, I saw overlap during the big debate about the closure of Dioxide Canada. The provincial government had environmental standards, the federal government had environmental standards, one said something was white, the other that it was black, so much so that the company did not know just what to do. Furthermore, Fisheries and Oceans Canada also came on the scene, with the result that the company that had planned to close in Tracy and open in Bécancour decided to suspend the work in Bécancour, temporarily, I hope. This is a fine example of wasted energy, time and money, to the detriment of the 400 Dioxide workers.
I would like to conclude, Mr. Speaker. The minister did not mention it in her speech this morning and we were surprised by a statement from the member for Ottawa-Vanier, former chairman of the public accounts committee. All day yesterday, the Liberal members said, "Why do you call for a special committee of all members of the House to study the spending of every department item by item?" They told us, "No, the public accounts committee will look after that. That is its role". This morning, the member for Ottawa-Vanier, a former opposition member who chaired the public accounts committee for three years, as my colleague reminds me, and I conclude with that, Mr. Speaker, told us, "We made a report, but the House never acted on it in three years". So the public accounts committee has become something of a habit-it tables a report and no one acts on it. That is why we are demanding-and I think it is along the lines of the Reformers' resolution-a special committee of members from the government and all parties, including independents, to carry out an exhaustive item-by-item study of all spending by the departments. I think that the government's commitment would be greater, out of respect for the conclusions this committee would have reached. It would elicit a greater commitment than the usual annual report of the public accounts committee, which was denounced this morning by the man who chaired it for three years, the member for Ottawa-Vanier.
I would like to have the minister's comments.