Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to talk about a serious issue affecting not only my community but also Ontario and other parts of the country.
Specifically, I asked a question about coal-fired plants and the effect they have on our communities and on our air quality and also what they do to our international relations. We have just had a discussion on softwood lumber disputes, but we also have a disruption happening because of transboundary pollution.
In Windsor, Ontario, we actually suffer some of the worst air quality at different times because of transboundary air pollution coming from the Ohio Valley and across Michigan. We have all kinds of issues related to smog as well as the environmental conditions that affect people's health because this actually affects the water, the soil and also the air we breathe.
One of the situations we have in Canada is that in Ontario we have some of the worst coal-fired plants in this area. They are actually affecting the State of New York. The State of New York is receiving a lot of pollution from Ontario and this country, to the point where New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, wants three coal-fired plants in southern Ontario to be shut down on their emissions because they are causing major damage to the state's environmental public health.
Mr. Spitzer actually filed a complaint with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. He wants the board to investigate the pollution output of three coal-fired plants in particular.
Actually, a coalition of 40 groups and organizations are involved in this, but we have not seen the federal government come forward with its position, to make sure that there are going to be supports to phase out these plants.
We recently had a provincial election in Ontario in which the Liberal Party of Ontario promised at election time to phase them out by 2007, I believe, but now they seem to be waffling a little. I think that now is the time for the federal government to help eliminate these coal-fired plants and convert them or use other alternatives, which are outlined in a number of different initiatives. That could be quite possible.
One quote I have to note is this one from Mr. Spitzer:
Ontario's massive coal-fired power plants operate with wholly inadequate pollution controls and are a major factor contributing to acid rain and respiratory disease in New York and throughout the northeast.
This is a problem that is identified not only by Spitzer and the Americans who are doing something on this; the coalition even involves Canadian groups. We also have other groups and organizations in Ontario, such as the Ontario Public Health Association, that are calling for the elimination of these plants.
Also, in regard to the Ontario economy, it costs billions of dollars each year because of the smog and air congestion we face from the plants.
My question for the government is about what specifically it can do seeing that we have signed the Kyoto agreement and seeing that reductions of these emissions themselves would have a significant effect on the overall situation if our country met the obligations of the commitment which we as the New Democratic Party support. Why will the government not be proactive and move on the issue as opposed to just letting it drag on?