Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's dissertation by and large was motherhood. He is saying that we have to keep the world clean and protect our environment. I do not think anyone questions that.
I have a little problem, though, with his philosophy that it is only a benevolent and all powerful federal government that can look after the interest of the general public.
Surely in this day and age with the examples we have seen over the last 50 or 60 years in the world, or in Canada just within the last decade, of the results of federal benevolence we should go slowly in that regard.
However that is not the main point I picked up as a point of dispute. I really have a problem with people in certain branches of the environmental movement who use the argument that we can never be certain about anything before we take action, that we have to take a preventive stance even if we do not know what we are doing, just in case.
This reminds me to some extent of what might have happened in a medieval society where after a period of ongoing crop failures the finger was pointed at some poor old lady in a village and they said she did it, that it was her fault, that she cast an evil spell. They were not sure. They could not prove it so they played safe. The safest thing they could do was to burn her and not worry about logic. They did not worry about debate or, in the case of the hon. member's presentation, they did not worry about science.
What on earth do we have highly paid experts for? Why do we have universities? Why do we have research institutes if we are not to take seriously both the negatives and the positives of their work? Why must we get side tracked and say “It might be toxic. It might be dangerous. Therefore let's be sure. Let's get rid of it and do the science later?” That is a backward way of operating.