Mr. Speaker, obviously I think there are many areas where we could work together.
Let us look at Toronto where 400 trucks a day go down the highway to Wisconsin. That has to end. It makes no sense from a trucking standpoint, a safety standpoint or an environmental standpoint. There is no argument for that. I do not understand why that happens and why we would not change that.
My frustration with this whole issue has been this. When I first came here, I went to Environment Canada. I asked officials what we could do to change the way we dealt with garbage. They told me that as a member of Parliament I could not talk about that because that was a provincial issue. They told me to go and see the province.
I talked to officials in a number of the provinces. They told me not to talk to them about garbage, or research or ask questions. They told me I should go to the municipalities.
I went to the municipalities and they said that they did not have the money to do any kind of research or development on that. They said that it would be too costly, and referred me back to the provinces.
That is the problem. The technology is there. The federal government's job is to show people the technology and show them the vision. Show them where we want to go, how we want to treat garbage and provide them with that background. Who does not have a problem with garbage?
The difference is we have to think of garbage as a resource, not a waste. We have to do some educating. We could cooperatively do that with the provinces because everyone has a problem. I am meeting with two mayors this weekend from small towns. On January 1, they will not have a place to put their garbage, and they do not know what to do. Europe dealt with that situation 35 or 40 years ago by containerizing it and sending it to major incinerators. As the member has said, the new incinerators are perfectly clean.
Yes, we would cooperate on that and, yes, we should work on that immediately.