Mr. Speaker, I think it is appropriate that this private member's bill is being brought forward today given today's debate in the House on water and the obviously detrimental effect it has on the citizens of this country and on their health when it is not adequately protected.
That, to a great degree, is what the bill is about. I would like to thank the Progressive Conservative member for St. John's East for having brought forward the bill and giving us this opportunity to debate it.
I will take this opportunity to quote some material. One of the quotes I found is from the Telegram newspaper in Newfoundland from October 24 of last year. This is how the harbour was described: “The harbour, a noxious stew of feces, condoms, tampons, rubber gloves and everything else that gets flushed down the thousands of toilets in the metro area, has long been an environmental embarrassment”.
What is interesting is the date that the article appeared in that paper because of course it was not long before the last federal election. The present Minister of Industry was quoted at that time as saying that he would “work as hard and as smart” as he could to bring sewage treatment to the region, appropriately so, as we also have the Minister of the Environment in the government—again I am paraphrasing but reflecting the positions he has taken—on the record, recognizing that the lack of sewage treatment is a serious threat to the sustainability of coastal communities, affecting human health, constraining economic development and compromising ecosystem integrity through the release of toxic substances into freshwater and marine ecosystems.
He should also be working as hard and as smart as one of his other fellow ministers, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who went further than the Minister of the Environment in his threatened legal action against those poisoning the waters of the Atlantic by the discharge of raw sewage. I am talking about the city of St. John's which the fisheries minister is to sue.
After all the work that has been done and the history in terms of the amount of pollutants being released into the water in that area, we still have no involvement of any consequence by the federal government. It is important to recognize the amount of work that has been done by both the province and the municipality in terms of their one-third shares. They have to be acknowledged in that regard.
In the legislature of Newfoundland yesterday Mr. Harris, a member of the New Democratic Party in that house, asked the premier what was happening in terms of the cleanup of St. John's harbour. Basically he received this response:
Unfortunately, I do have to report that we have no definite commitment from the Government of Canada yet with respect to their one-third share. We have made a firm request, repeatedly, that they participate with a special fund, and a separate fund, for an initiative as important as the clean up of the St. John's harbour.
Then he indicated they would continue to do that and were expecting at some point that the federal government would come through. He went on to acknowledge the comment that Mr. Harris had made earlier about the fact that the provincial government and the municipality involved had committed their one-third shares. Yet there has been no action by the federal government.
I come back to where we were today in the debate on water and the motion we passed earlier in support of setting national standards. It is typical of the federal government that it is willing to support that type of motion but when confronted with the reality of the necessary action we see no response.
We have the municipality kicking in its $31 million. The provincial government in Newfoundland is kicking in its $31 million. They are prepared to do so and ready to go. They even have a design of the plant and the piping required to make the system work appropriately and safely for the protection of the environment and the health of the people of St. John's.
They have done all that work and the only missing piece is a commitment from the federal government. They still do not see it. If the federal government were serious when it supported the motion that was passed earlier, it would act when an occasion like this one comes forward. We are in strong support of the motion and of the needed action and would vote accordingly.