Mr. Speaker, the federal government decided to put an end to the never ending search for a site precisely because $20 million was spent on the fruitless search for a federal site between 1988 and 1994. I felt that this expenditure related to the green plan was no longer justifiable, and I asked Public Works Canada to resume sending these products to Swan Hills in Alberta from the month of March onwards.
Negotiations are ongoing and, as the former minister of the environment will explain to the hon. member, the cost of disposing of PCBs is not Environment Canada's responsibility. Each department that is responsible for PCBs must pay the cost involved in shipping them to Swan Hills. In addition, under the supervision of Public Works, we are already negotiating with the Department of National Defence, among others, to also ensure that we will not have to absorb the storage costs and to ensure that we will be able to dispose of all of the federal government's PCBs by the end of 1996, as was promised in the green plan.