Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. I certainly agree with the reference to Cape Breton people being productive.
I think the member has perhaps misunderstood the premise of some of my remarks when he suggests that I do not recognize the future potential in Cape Breton and the need to reach out and look for other solutions. I am not going to stand here, as I would suggest no member of the House should do, and say that this is going to be an easy solution, that there is something that will be found overnight or that something will fall out of the thin blue air to replace an industry that has been there for centuries.
I am not suggesting for a minute that we should be picking out pieces of this carcass. Perhaps a more apt analogy would be to take pieces of a used car. I am suggesting that we should look at the entire situation. Is it all or nothing? Will all of these mines be closed, doing away with the coal mining industry completely, as opposed to operating some of these mines that are economically viable and can be operated safely?
Certainly safety we cannot ignore in this debate. Heaven forbid that we have another mining disaster like that which we saw in Plymouth, Nova Scotia at the Westray mine. We know that coal mining can be done safely. If we can put a man on the moon, we can take coal out of the ground and we can do so safely. It has been done in the past.
I am suggesting that rather than wiping out the whole industry in Cape Breton, if there are those interested in buying certain select parts of that industry and operating them in a way that will be in line with government regulation, that is what we should be doing. We should not rule out that option.