Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate on the second reading of Bill C-94 and more particularly on the Reform Party amendment proposed by the member for Calgary North who does not think we should proceed with Bill C-94, an act to regulate interprovincial trade and so on. She thinks the bill should be withdrawn and we should merely refer this issue for further study before a parliamentary committee. I would like to speak to that for a moment.
Every now and then the Reform Party in its wisdom tells us we should not procrastinate, delay things, debate them too long, that we should move on with things. I heard profound speeches from hon. members of the Reform Party yesterday, at least as profound as we can get from Reform members, admonishing the government and all of us, asking us to pass legislation more quickly. What is the first thing they do? They propose an amendment asking that we not proceed with this bill.
Let us get to the subject matter of the bill to determine whether the Reform Party is correct in what it wants. What does the bill do? The purpose of the bill is to prohibit the import or the interprovincial trade for commercial purposes of MMT or anything containing MMT. What does that mean? It means that particular additive to gasoline would not be permitted.
I suppose the next question is does everyone not use MMT? It is not used in hardly any country except ours, and I will get into more specific details in a minute. Could it be that if it is not good enough for anyone else then perhaps we should consider banning that product as well?
Some people will say it is used in a variety of countries. The Ethyl Corporation put an ad in newspapers yesterday or the day before saying it is used in some countries and gave the examples of Brazil and New Zealand, I believe. It is used there and let it not be said it is not used anywhere.
I did not keep the advertisement in question because I thought the corporation's own sales pitch made the reverse argument of what it was trying to prove. It was saying it was not true that it was not used anywhere, that it was not used just about everywhere. I thought that reinforced the argument most of us believed in.
MMT should be banned for a number of reasons. The product in question has been known to have effects which are offensive to the health of people. That is why it was not used in many countries. That is why it is still not used by most nations. The question we should ask is does it make it any better if we keep the product? No, that does not work either.
The hon. member for Bruce-Grey the other day gave us a very important speech on this issue. He is very knowledgeable in the area. He taught that subject matter as a teacher and knows much about it. He told us why the attitude of some people with regard to this product is totally wrong.