Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that $1 billion to change technology to deal with an environmental issue is absurd. Certainly that is the kind of absurd sort of scaremongering that we were subjected to by the industrial lobby assault against this bill.
I would like to point out to my colleague that the issue of virtual elimination, the definition itself, as originally posed in Bill C-32, was so incomprehensible that it could have led to three different kinds of interpretation. Uncertainty for industry is a big issue. However, it was the deputy minister of Environment Canada who put forward an amendment through the government which changed the definition at committee. The definition is exactly the same as it is in the toxic substance management policy. In 1995 stakeholder groups, including industry stakeholder groups, signed on to the toxic substance management policy, which has exactly the same definition as Bill C-32. They agreed with it. I have not seen industry pouring out of the country in the last five years.
My colleague says that we should not be chasing the last molecule, which is true. That is what it says in the toxic substance management policy. However, what industry lobbyists tend to forget is what happens on the second page of the toxic substance management policy, which is to say that the ultimate objective is to go toward virtual elimination without consideration for sociological and economic factors. That has often been missed.