Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Davenport is a humble individual and a great parliamentarian. In his opening remarks he gave credit to the Minister of the Environment for bringing this bill forward. However, members of the House, in particular members of the environment committee and members of the environmental organizations in the country will know that the hon. member for Davenport, as the chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development made the concept of environmental auditing the subject of the very first study of that committee in this Parliament. No sooner was the government elected than the hon. member for Davenport, as the chair of the committee, chose to make this the subject of study of that committee.
It was an exhaustive study. Many witnesses were called. Members of the committee sat and studied for hours, days and weeks to come up with a very superb report. That report had few flaws in it. It was a report which many throughout Canada accepted as the very least that we could accept. The committee report could have gone one step further than it did and proposed an ombudsperson role, an investigative role which went beyond that of simply auditing and promoting the environment and sustainable development.
When the report was released the foreword of the report was written by the hon. member for Davenport as the chair of the committee. The chair writes in the foreword of the report that as a result of its deliberation the committee has concluded that the most appropriate way to implement the government's proposed functions is through the creation of a commissioner of sustainable development in conjunction with an expanded role for the office of the auditor general. The committee believes the creation of a commissioner of the environment and sustainable development is a priority, one which appropriately answers the request of the government and which will provide the necessary momentum for the shift toward sustainability.
The member for Davenport and the committee concluded that what was necessary as a minimum to meet the needs of the government's commitment to the people of Canada and the long term needs of the environment was a commissioner of the environment along with an expanded office of the auditor general. What we get in response from the Minister of the Environment is simply an expansion of the office of the auditor general. The whole proactive role of a commissioner of sustainable development as promoted by the committee does not exist.
The member for Davenport as the chairperson of the committee spoke very well about what is yet needed in this bill. He outlined a number of things that were yet needed. I applaud him for that step. I asked him how he can rationalize his comments about the need for a proactive commissioner of the environment and his support for Bill C-83 which certainly does not do that.