Mr. Speaker, for the last number of years I have been involved along with the former member from London, Ralph Ferguson, in pushing the issue of better acceptance and more use of ethanol, one of the alternate octane enhancers to MMT.
I believe we were very close to passing, if we did not pass in the House in the last Parliament, a private member's motion to accept ethanol as a replacement for MMT. There was a lot of support at that time for replacement of MMT for many of the reasons the parliamentary secretary has outlined for us today.
At that time we were not made aware of the EPA's requirement to review the whole question of MMT because of the court ruling. However, one of the things we were trying to use at that time from the farm production point of view was the fact that ethanol was a very good replacement. It was renewable and at that point there was a surplus of grains, the source of ethanol, and they were very cheap.
Could the minister tell us what the economics of ethanol production has become? I know I have one of the larger ethanol production units in my riding. It is concerned about the sudden increase in the cost of inputs. Grain prices have more than doubled since the time that Ralph Ferguson introduced his bill.
Will this change make a sizeable change to the cost of gasoline because the ethanol may cost more than the MMT and what will the economic costs of such a change be? Has the Department of the Environment looked at the new costs of ethanol given that the raw material going into ethanol production, namely grains, has virtually doubled or more over the last three or four years?