Mr. Speaker, I think this is truly an area where the government could carry out its responsibilities.
As my colleague indicated, it has been almost a year since we, on this side of the House, found out through access to information that many of the contaminated sites belonged to the federal government. Some sites come under Transport Canada, National Defence, Fisheries and Oceans, while others are directly under the of the Crown.
At the time, the government said “The Bloc Quebecois is wrong”. But we still had to wait until this summer, until last August in fact, to get our hands on the list of contaminated sites in Canada which are under federal jurisdiction—under the aegis of the President of the Treasury Board since she is responsible for these issues—and to realize that Quebec has more contaminated sites under federal jurisdiction than any other province.
We would have hoped to find in the throne speech not only decontamination measures but also additional funding. Civil servants are telling us that plans are in place but there is no money to implement them.
So, if we really want to commit to the cleanup and decontamination of federal sites, in order to avoid any impact on public health and the environment, we have to find additional funds to properly implement the decontamination plans for the good of the people.