Mr. Speaker, we should make note that this is probably the first time in the history of Canadian parliament that a Conservative updated the lexicon of a New Democrat in terms of environmental phraseology, otherwise known as buzzwords.
Turning to the notion of internalizing the externalities, the externalities are those products that are produced unintentionally by any level of production. To internalize those externalities means to incorporate in the cost of production the unintended production costs. In this case, environmental costs are incorporated into the cost of products that the consumers pays at the time, also known as whole costing. I appreciate his update of my lexicon in areas of the environment in a more simple and holistic way.
The notion of whole costing and addressing the total cost of production is difficult to do. The methodologies for doing this are not easy to implement. However, I think it is very important that we start doing that.
Again, bad environmental policy is ultimately bad economic policy because both disciplines deal with the management of scarce resources. Any economic argument or any pricing arrangement that ignores the true cost, wihtout the whole costing as put forth by the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, is in fact bad economics. We have to become more rational in the way that we allocate both environmental and otherwise economic resources.