Mr. Speaker, basically my colleague has reviewed our party's position. I would like to trace how the Canadian Environmental Protection Act came to be and some of the problems we have had with the bill as it moved through the House.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act was originally brought to the House in 1988. Part of that legislation, which I think was extremely helpful, indicated that in five years time the bill would come back to the House for review. That is what happened. Unfortunately it has taken about five years to reach today.
In Bill C-74 in the last parliament the government brought forward what it thought was the answer to reviewing CEPA. It brought forward some amendments. There were some flaws in that bill and it never reached the House in its final form. In this parliament the government again brought forward the new Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
In the view of the Reform Party it was a well balanced act. It looked after the needs of Canadians as well as the needs of a healthy environment and the needs of industry. It was a well balanced act which then went to committee.
The problem was the make-up of the committee. If either side of an issue, either the hang them high side or the other side, is loaded in any committee, the result will be skewed legislation. If the fisheries committee is loaded up with a bunch of fishermen there will be a skewed result.
Unfortunately there was not a balance in the environment committee. There were 560 amendments before the committee in an attempt to bring the legislation back to where it was in Bill C-74, which did not pass in the last House. All of us in the House have spent thousands of hours collectively in committee dealing with the bill.
When it came back to the House it was a bill that even the government could not live with. Another 235 amendments were introduced at report stage, with which we dealt yesterday and in the weeks before, to bring the bill back to basically where it was when it was introduced over a year ago. This involved a lot of time and a lot of energy.
This is not a shot at any of the people on the committee, but I think it is a shot at the government. A requirement of committees should be balance right across the board. Whether it is fisheries, justice or environment, the make-up of a committee should be balanced. In my view the environment committee was not balanced, which caused excessive hours of work on the part of all members and staff.
The staff behind the scenes basically spent a year keeping this process going. It was extremely frustrating at times for all of us. I would hope that in the future this could be avoided by having a balance of each committee across the spectrum.
It was unfortunate that yesterday there had to be time allocation on this bill. We were already at the seventh group of motions. We could have had eight. There were only eight groups. Basically it could have gone through. It is unfortunate after all the time we have spent on it that we did not have the opportunity to at least voice our opinions in the House. Then Canadians could have heard the different views and aspects each member had.
When my colleague was talking about the graduation ceremonies, he commented that most Canadians are environmentalists. The younger people are much more environmentally friendly and environmentally conscious than my generation. This is healthy.
We have a grand country. We need to look after it. This bill does that. Three of the five parties in the House will support the bill this evening I believe. It is a bill that in my mind hits the balance. I know others will say that it is not a balance. We can have a vibrant and healthy environment and a vibrant and healthy economy. They are not independent. They can be together. That is what this bill does.
In conclusion, we will support the bill this evening. It has taken a long time to get here. As I said at the beginning, one of the strong points of the last bill was that it came back to the House. This bill will also come back to the House in seven years. There will be an opportunity to refine it and to move it along so that it remains timely and current.
The member for Davenport has initiated a very timely review on pesticides. Part of the problem is we are dealing with pesticides that were registered 30 years ago and are out of date. By coming back to the House in seven years the bill will move with the times. It will be current.
We support the bill. We look forward to seeing its passage through the Senate and becoming law.