Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, but he may have misheard or misunderstood certain things.
I did of course refer to DDT, because that was the example I wanted to use. I wanted to use that very specific example because it is an actual example of the use of a pesticide which had, and which obviously caused, major environmental hazards.
He spoke of the raptors as being affected, but they are not the only ones. In all countries where DDT was used at that time, this highly toxic substance was found throughout the food chain. Of course, it had an impact on human beings. What would that have been? Research could be done today, updating the situation, and then we would perhaps have a better idea.
My colleague has raised another point. Today, of course, certain pesticides can be considered less dangerous, less harmful, than at that time, 30 or 40 years ago. Nevertheless, it is often only in the long term that there is an awareness of the potential effects. In the short term, we can say, “Yes, a given pesticide does not seem to be highly toxic”. If it is not biodegradable, however, in the long term it can obviously be dangerous. A pesticide that is not biodegradable inevitably ends up in the food chain and inevitably also in our environment.
When my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis referred just now to the 500% principle of precaution, I am totally in agreement with him. We must have total or near total assurance, if this is possible, that the pesticides we use are not dangerous in the long term to human health and to our environment. One of the points he raised was the very serious problem posed by the use of thousands of tonnes of pesticide products.
I would also like to add, as I did in my speech, that our countries must not stop using highly toxic products, stop manufacturing them, ban their use, and then send them off to the third world, as has been done in the past.