Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to follow the member for Yorkton--Melville in the debate because it is a fantastic opportunity for a rebuttal on almost every point he made in his intervention.
One wonders in listening to the member for Yorkton--Melville whether he has thought about the reasons that lead has been banned from gasoline, from toys and from batteries. Evidently the member's historical recollection is not long, otherwise he would know that lead was even banned in Roman times because of the knowledge that lead is a poisonous substance.
For the member for Yorkton--Melville to say that the motion is ill-conceived is hilarious to say the least. It is a demonstration of backward thinking of the kind I have not heard in a long time.
The science is lacking according to the member for Yorkton--Melville. One only has to speak to accredited scientists at any university, to chemists, to people in the field of the science related to botany and related subjects in nature, to environmentalists. They say there is a substantial problem in nature caused by lead objects created by man, which when ingested by birds or other animals cause serious disease and poisoning that leads eventually to death.
For the member for Yorkton--Melville to say that we need a communications effort, as he did, and that we need a voluntary approach and further consultations with stakeholders really ignores the reality of the issue. He is proposing a recipe for inaction. If we were to do all the things that he proposed in his intervention today, we could be here for another 10 or 15 years.
Why does the member for Yorkton--Melville think that the use of lead sinkers by fishers are now banned in national parks? That happened in 1997. The environment committee wrote a report in 1995 on the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in which it examined the issue of lead sinkers and in which it recommended their phaseout. Two years later, to her credit, the then Minister of the Environment banned their use in national parks. Why was that done? Certainly it was not because of incomplete science and not because it would cause, as the member said, the loss of thousands of jobs in Quebec. It is utterly ridiculous to say that.
It brings back to my memory the very same arguments that were made in the early 1980s when the issue before us was the removal of lead from gasoline. The same argument was made that it could not be done because thousands of jobs would be lost, that the refineries would have insurmountable costs and that there was not enough scientific proof that lead was dangerous and harmful.
There are piles of studies related to the fact that lead causes an impairment to a child's ability to learn. This has been established in communities near factories producing lead batteries in Toronto and Montreal. It is in any major centre where there has been a lead battery factory.
Has the member for Yorkton--Melville ever visited a facility that produced lead batteries? Is he aware of the studies before he would call for further ones? He said there is too little of it and therefore we need better communications and better consultation with stakeholders. This is trying to turn the clock back a hundred years.
What we should be doing is applauding the member for Saint-Bruno--Saint-Hubert for this motion. This is very timely and long overdue for all the reasons that one can bring forward.
We had the benefit in recent months of a witness before the environment committee in the person of Dr. Vernon Thomas from Guelph University who studied the subject for years. He is an international expert who has devoted virtually his life to the link between the presence of lead in nature and its effect on species. He has come to the same conclusions that the member for Saint-Bruno--Saint-Hubert has, namely that these items should no longer be used because the swallowing of lead intoxicates migratory birds. It intoxicates any living being that eventually ingests this type of toxic substance.
Dr. Thomas has produced a number of extremely interesting and substantive studies indicating that it is desirable to phase out the presence of lead and to gradually reduce it because the technology is there, and replace it with other substances which are a little bit more costly. There is no doubt about that. However the cost of non-lead fishing sinkers, for instance, would add something like $4.00 or $5.00 per individual amateur fisherman, which is a small amount considering the totality of the cost of the equipment which a fisherman uses when sport fishing. It would be a modest increase per se and affordable.
As the trend would increase in shifting away from lead to metals like tungsten then the mass production would permit a lowering of the cost of the new product. In the same way, the only mild observation that one can make about the motion before us is that it stops with fishing weights and baits and it does not include shots and pellets. They should be included in this overall discussion because they should also be banned.
The use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting was banned or announced as a possible policy by Environment Canada in 1999, so we already have an initiative that has been announced. It only needs to be implemented. Unfortunately none of the provinces have undertaken a similar action within their jurisdiction unless it has been done in the province of Quebec. I defer here to my learned colleague from Quebec who is a member of the environment committee. That is probably only a matter of time. Here is a situation where the provinces could take the lead with the federal government.
The ideal step would be to ban lead fishing weights and lead shot Canada wide so that we would put to rest this notion that we need more studies, consultations and involvement of stakeholders on a matter that has been studied to death.