Mr. Speaker, for more than a year, I had the opportunity to sit on the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development chaired by the member for Davenport. I have to admit that, up until about ten minutes ago, I admired the member for Davenport. Unfortunately, I discovered this afternoon, in the speech he just made, that he had a total lack of respect for my colleague, the member for Laurentides, specially when he asked her if she needed a psychiatrist.
It was a low blow and I think the member for Davenport should apologize. He really went a little too far. During all the time that I sat with him on the environment committee, I always noticed his honesty and his judgment as a politician, particularly in environmental matters.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I stand in this House to speak to Bill C-83, an Act to amend the Auditor General Act.
It has been a few weeks since we last talked about this bill in the House, so I should take a few minutes to review its contents briefly.
Bill C-83 amends the Auditor General Act to achieve five objectives which I will sum up quickly.
Firstly, to ensure that environmental considerations in the context of sustainable development are taken into account in the Auditor General's reports to the House of Commons.
Secondly, to require the appointment of a Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
Thirdly, to impose requirements for responding to petitions received by the Auditor General about environmental matters under federal jurisdiction-and I repeat it for the benefit of the member for Davenport-under federal jurisdiction in the context of sustainable development.
Fourthly, to require monitoring and reporting to the House of Commons on petitions and the extent to which departments have met the objectives, and implemented the plans, set out in their sustainable development strategies.
And finally, fifthly, to require that departmental sustainable development strategies be prepared and tabled in the House of Commons.
On a technical level, the adoption of this bill will require the implementation of a number of things. First of all, there must be an appropriate definition of sustainable development. I will come back to that later.
But I will say to the hon. member for Davenport, who got carried away a few minutes ago, that the government has been in power for two years. A sunken barge has sat in the waters between Prince Edward Island and the Magdalen Islands for 25 years now. At the end of June, we learned quite by accident that there was an important quantity of PCB tainted oil in the sunken ship. The barge has been there for 25 years and the Liberals were in power during most of that period, except for the nine years of the Mulroney government and the nine months of the Clark government.
It is easy to boast about sustainable development, but that barge was supposed to be refloated this year and nothing has been done. They chose the wrong solution because it was cheaper, but I can guarantee you, as does my colleague for Davenport, that, once the Irving Whale is refloated, when we get the bill the cost will be more than if we had chosen the better solution to begin with.
Sustainable development, what a trendy expression. It is useful if one wants to get reelected, of course. But why did they not apply it in the two years since their election? Of course, the Liberal Party sed up a fine committee-the Easter-Gagnon committee-that went to the Magdalen Islands and self sufficiently told to the people to step aside, that they would refloat the barge.
We can refloat it, they claimed. Give us 12 months, and we will refloat it. How much did it cost us to have the Gagnon-Easter mini caucus go around making political points?
The member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine learned his lesson with the last referendum. The islands' voters showed the member who had promised to resign if the no lost in Quebec where the door was.