Mr. Speaker, I see that the hon. member from the Sault, for whom I have a great amount of respect, has learned a few things from his experience at Queen's Park, and once the light was out, he continued to make his point. I heard it and I hope he is able to make the point a little further on in regard to the questions I have.
The hon. member has raised a number of very critical points. I appreciate the fact that he has not been able to watch the proceedings of the committee. Certainly his party has been very active through the hon. member for Halifax, who continues to do a very good job on this particular file and others.
I want to point out to the hon. member that several amendments took place. Many of them of course were duplicated with the Bloc Québécois. In particular, for his ease of reference I want to look at subclause 36(2) on the recovery of penalties and amounts. It states, “No proceedings to recover such a debt may be commenced later than seven years after the debt became payable”. That is one amendment that the NDP proposed which the committee accepted in a very non-partisan way.
Another one proposed by the NDP had to deal with the archiving of raw data, including public access to the archived data.
It is clear that the committee also, in its own wisdom and in its own extensive and exhaustive consultations, which, we will recall, have been going on since November 2004, almost a year ago, talked at great length about ballistic missile defence. At the beginning, some actually thought this had something to do with ballistic missile defence. At the time, the member's party certainly felt that a remote sensing satellite somehow could be used as a function to help guide one of these missiles. That clearly, in terms of the understanding of technology, could not happen and I am pleased to see that the hon. member is not talking about that.
But the hon. member got it absolutely wrong with respect to how the treaty will work between Canada and the United States. Canada retains its sovereignty. It retains its discretion under the recently signed 2004 treaty to ensure that all information that is Canadian is controlled, regulated and protected in our national interests and will not be divulged.
The hon. member made a point at the end of his speech about his concern for farmers. The hon. member knows that many farmers are now using GPS technology, once owned by governments and then given to the private sector. It is a perfect example of where we see the blossoming of technology once controlled by government, for very military reasons, I suspect, now being used for peaceful reasons. I am sure the hon. member would agree with that.
Since he talked about farmers, he would also know that farmers in his area would understand quite well that the sooner we implement all of this technology, the sooner we can make something out of the $450 million he is so concerned about, quite apart from the defence or national interests of the country, or the concerns we have about the fish stocks or global warming or the decrease in the ice cap and all of these images. We can make value added contributions to help Canadians.
As for this hon. member and his party, when we really think about it, about where they were a year ago and where they are now, we have come a long way, not only in accommodating the concerns of the Bloc and the NDP but also in ensuring that we accommodate above all the interests of all Canadians.
Given all the accommodations that have taken place, given the work that has been done by members of Parliament, does the hon. member now want to stand in his place and support a darn good bill?