Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member speak against this proposed legislation. I believe the hon. member's heart is in the right place. She brought up some very thoughtful questions. She made some very thoughtful interventions.
I want to comment on a couple of the questions that the honourable member asked.
The first question was why the haste in bringing in this bill. This bill was first tabled in December 1996. This is not haste. This is just bringing something back that because of various reasons, breaks, et cetera, has not had due course in the House. Having first reading of the bill in December 1996 and talking about it almost a year later is considered to be haste.
Second, the honourable member spoke about lots of other very important health issues that she felt that the government should be dealing with at this point in time. Are we suggesting an either/or set of initiatives so that if we do safe drinking water we will not be paying attention to other issues? It is obvious that you cannot do all things at once, but this is important.
The question is why now. Why do we need this bill now? Why do not we wait until we have a lot of evidence, until there are innumerable small children who have died from gastroenteritis because of drinking unsafe water, until we have had lots of people become ill, and then when we have all that data, let's do something about it?
The whole concept of good public health policy is to be proactive. It is to protect people, to prevent. It is called preventive health care at its very best. This is what I see this bill about. I think that the question again is why not work with stakeholders. It is obvious that it is in the second component of this bill when it goes to committee that we will be hearing from stakeholders, where we will factor in all of the whys and wherefores and concerns and new ideas that will come in to strengthen the bill. That is what the legislation is about.