Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to participate this afternoon in this debate on Motion M-425.
Notwithstanding what we just heard-and I am not sure that the motion has this much importance in a sense-I must say that the remarks that were just made do not reflect what I would call the truth.
First, the motion before the House says that the government should support the undertaking-it says support, it does not say establish it themselves-support the undertaking of a country-wide program of improving the treatment of municipal sewage to a minimum standard of at least that of primary treatment facilities. The motion does not even talk about establishing one national standard, as was alleged by the hon. member from the Bloc Quebecois. Second, it is totally false to allege that it does anything else, which the member has also indicated.
Second, there is an amendment, and I wonder whether it is really in order. It must be in order if the Chair accepted it. I must tell you that this amendment has no connection with the main issue, since it deals with a right for all provinces to financial compensation. One has nothing to do with the other.
The motion simply calls upon the federal government to support certain initiatives to guarantee a minimum level of waste water treatment. That is all this motion is about.
Once again, today, the Bloc Quebecois was caught in this House making things up and stretching the truth to an incredible extent.
Sir Winston Churchill once said that the opposite to the truth had never been stated with greater accuracy. I guess one could apply that to the speech the House just heard with respect to what the intention of the motion really is.
I want to speak a bit about the infrastructure program. We get mixed messages from Reform MPs on infrastructure. The motion by the hon. member for Comox-Alberni invites the federal government to support infrastructure programs concerning sewers and the like. I have to admit that we have been getting mixed messages from Reform Party MPs on that subject. Come to think of it, we have been getting mixed messages from the Reform Party on just about every issue.
I have an editorial from the Ottawa Citizen , the valley edition, of August 14, 1994, which speaks of the Reform Party position on infrastructure. It is entitled Reform Sings the Blues'' and states thatThe Reform Party seems to have changed its tune after advocating the nurturing of infrastructure before the election''.
It works something like this. Before the election the Reform Party was in favour of ameliorating the infrastructure and of the federal government supporting it. After the election Reformers started criticizing this. You might ask what is wrong with that, after all, they are Reformers and it should be expected that they will contradict themselves every now and then. That might be true, but there is a certain limit beyond which it becomes odd, even for Reformers.
We have the spectacle of the hon. member for Simcoe Centre. That is a spectacle if I ever saw one. He wrote a letter regarding an infrastructure program in his riding. I want all my colleagues to know it was a coincidence that it was in his riding. The letter, which was to the President of the Treasury Board, stated: "I am writing to further offer my strong support for the project because of the significant job creation this project will provide. One of the main objectives of the infrastructure program is to promote public and private sector partnerships that will not only improve the local and regional economic climate, but also will help Canada as a whole to attract corporations by providing prime business opportunity" and so on.
That was the hon. member for Simcoe Centre, who was at that time writing in praise of an infrastructure program that just happened to be located in his riding. After that was over the same member-