First of all, what I told the House was that the funds earmarked for Phase II of the St. Lawrence Action Plan will be spent on cleaning up the river.
Having said that, I must point out that the St. Lawrence runs all the way from Brockville, Ontario, before reaching the sea in the Lower St. Lawrence district. My brother's father-in-law has a cottage in Carleton, on Chaleur Bay, just across from New Brunswick.
What we want to do it is to clean up the St. Lawrence and that is exactly what we have committed to do before this House. All the funds earmarked for this project will be spent on pollution control.
That being said, I think that the hon. member is taking a narrow view when he claims that, in the event of technological problems, investments will necessarily be distributed on a geographical basis. He must have heard of Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical researcher who developed the vaccine to stop the polio epidemic afflicting so many people around the world.
We did not tell Dr. Salk, who was with the University of Toronto, that the funds had to be invested in Toronto.
What is important is to use the right technology. The technology used to clean up the St. Lawrence has to be good, whether it is developed in Quebec or elsewhere. If there were a problem in Lake Ontario or Hamilton Sound, near where I live, and a research scientist from Montreal could find a way to solve the problem, I would not tell him not to just because he is from Quebec.
I think that the decision to invest in cleaning up the river is a sound one. Our government is not the one that signed the agreement under which the funds were not distributed properly. This five-year plan for cleaning up the St. Lawrence River was signed by the current Leader of the Opposition, who was Minister of Environment at the time, and his Conservative colleagues. This plan did not specify how much was to be spent on pollution control. That is only part of the problem anyway.
The other one is making sure the right technology is used. I am sure that high-tech environmental companies in Quebec are very competitive and would not appreciate it if we decided that all funds for the Great Lakes could come only from companies around the Great Lakes. What we are looking for is good environmental technology that can be used in Ontario as well as in Quebec or in other provinces. That is what real environmental technology is about.