Mr. Speaker, today I tabled a bill in the House on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and our leader the right hon. member for Calgary Centre, an act to ensure safe drinking water throughout Canada.
We are proposing a way to keep a promise made in the House to Canadians one year ago on May 8, 2001 when the Liberals along with most parliamentarians in the House supported a motion we put forward which called upon the government to take immediate action working with the provinces and territories to turn existing guidelines and suggestions into national enforceable standards in the form of a safe water act.
This is yet another broken promise by the Liberal government. It is appalling that the government refuses to act to ensure the right of every Canadian, no matter where they live, to know that the drinking water they consume is safe. Walkerton should have served as a wake up call to the government.
Now that we have done the government's homework for it and introduced a bill which would work to ensure that such a tragedy did not happen again, we ask the Government of Canada to support our bill or to introduce their own safe water act to ensure that we have national standards for drinking water.