Mr. Speaker, I would like to wager that if Motion M-425 came from the other side of the House it would be getting a different hearing in the House.
I cannot imagine anyone concerned about clean water and health issues saying that this bill will not look after all the problems of Canada in terms of our water supply. Who says it would? Motion 425 simply calls for raising the standard in Canada to a minimal standard, a standard that would have solid settling, chlorination, and discharge of sewage in a much different manner from what we have today. Is it simplistic to try to raise the standard of water treatment in Canada? Where I come from it is not.
I would like to tell a little story relating to water quality. I am a fisherman. I enjoy sport fishing. The river that flows through the community near me is world class as a sport fishing river, the Bow River. In my youth I fished in that river and was unable to eat the fish. They were beautiful rainbow trout, wonderful to catch. A 24-inch rainbow would take me 20 minutes to land, but I released every one. They were oily downstream of Calgary. There was a huge amount of waste going into the Bow River.
I have a cousin in England who is a very keen fisherman. He came all the way from England to fish in the Bow River with me. He asked me whether I expected he would catch a wild trout in this beautiful stretch of water. I pretty well guaranteed him that he would. I told him what time of year to come. I said that I had some experience there and had the opportunity to just about guarantee him that unless there was a change in weather, a tremendous amount of extra mud in the water, he would be guaranteed a fish.
He did catch the first wild rainbow trout of his life. I will never forget him holding that beautiful fish out of the water and asking for a picture to be taken, then saying to me, "I must release this fish, it will be polluted". I was able to say to him, "No, Derrick, that fish today is edible". Over the 25 years since I had been fishing this river Calgary had cleaned up its act to the point where this beautiful fish could be eaten. He said, "I am a conservationist, I think I will release it anyway". And he did.
Does the treatment of effluent downstream of a big city make any difference? I believe it does.
I heard all kinds of praise for the infrastructure program from members opposite, an infrastructure program that I flatly think is an abject failure. To borrow $6 billion and mortgage the future of my children and my grandchildren to provide short term jobs in Canada is fundamentally flawed.
I will give one example of how badly the infrastructure program failed. This is a municipality I am responsible for in my own constituency.