Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a matter in which the Minister of Transport has dragged his feet. For the past three and a half years that I have been here, he has been dragging his feet, even though we raised the matter repeatedly.
I would first like to mention two newspaper articles in order to show just how long ago the Minister of Transport was asked to settle this matter.
On Thursday, December 14, 2000, not exactly yesterday, in the daily Le Soleil , a woman wrote “We are back in the age of Le temps d'une paix or worse, in the 1900s, because we have to use a lot of imagination every day in order to wash and cook without putting ourselves at risk”.
On February 5, the minister told me during Oral Question Period that he had assumed his responsibilities and had decided to deal with the matter and find solutions.
Just recently, on February 14, an article stated “Public health department recommends avoiding drinking the water”. I will quote one little paragraph from the article “The director of public health for the North Shore, Dr. Raynald Cloutier, recommends that the residents of the beaches area in Sept-Îles not drink their water. The public is clearly at risk”. Dr. Cloutier added “In short, it is becoming very distressing. I see no solution but to connect people to the municipal water and sewer system”.
The city of Sept-Îles assumed its responsibilities. For those not familiar with the area, there are four beaches. If a person heads east, toward the airport, toward Havre-Saint-Pierre, the first beach is the Monaghan beach. Then there is the Ferguson beach, and it is followed by the Routhier and the Lévesque beaches.
The one most affected was the Monaghan beach. The water was red like tomato juice. The city of Sept-Îles invested nearly $10 million. A figure of $5 million was negotiated in subsidies. I was the municipal councillor for that area at the time. Five million dollars was also invested on sewage treatment. At the time, this fixed the problem.
The further east one went, the more drinkable the water was. Then the Department of Transport contaminated the water table with nitrate from the airport. Since then, the minister has been giving us the same answer.
On September 28, 1998, the Sept-Îles municipal council passed a resolution—that is what municipal councils do—calling on Transport Canada to assume its responsibilities in the whole contaminated area by providing drinkable sources of water.
The minister's answer was the same one he gave me in the House on February 5. He said that the solutions proposed by Transport Canada to the water table contamination in the beaches area consisting of “an ion exchange treatment device, a reverse osmosis treatment device, bottled water delivery and the payment of a sum for the purchase of bottled water” were considered acceptable.
Can the House imagine the minister's reaction if he were to be given a bottle of water and a washcloth in his home or in one of the luxury hotel rooms he stays in and told that that was the water he was to wash with and to drink. Would he sit still for that? On April 26, 1999, the same municipal council passed another resolution calling for a meeting with the Minister of Transport.
This meeting took place, and the Minister of Transport told the House on February 5 that the permanent solutions, those in the second “whereas” of the municipal council's resolution, would be implemented.
What residents therefore want and what the municipal council called for at its February 12 meeting, is a meeting with the Minister of Transport to resolve the problem once and for all. This is ridiculous. The health of the public in the Sept-Îles Des Plages area is at stake.