Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the very relevant question. It gives me the opportunity to share further some of my specific concerns about pesticides, such as 2,4-D and other pesticides that are often used in a cosmetic way, not in any necessary agricultural way but simply for our own vanity, either for our potted plants, the shrubbery outside our homes, or so that we can have a greener lawn than our neighbour's.
That kind of vanity we are going to have to address as a nation very soon because the sheer volume of the chemicals that we are dumping into the environment in an unnecessary way is irresponsible and it is starting to catch up to us.
I mentioned that one pivotal point in my education on this subject was listening to a young man from Quebec who grew up in a region with five golf courses surrounding him. He suffers from brain cancer. His best friend died of brain cancer. In his community there are an alarming number of incidents of this particular type of cancer that has been traced to radical exposure to this type of chemical.
My colleague is absolutely right. Municipal governments are taking initiatives in Quebec and other places across Canada. One by one communities are unilaterally passing bylaws regarding the cosmetic use of pesticides, but as a federal government we hear nothing. The silence has been deafening.
The silence is a national shame, frankly, because we have this opportunity today to debate this issue of pesticides in our environment and we are not hearing progressive, courageous legislation that will put our foot down and say, “This is a bad thing. We want it eradicated from our communities. Let us put public health first before the right of industry to produce these chemicals and the right of irresponsible people to pollute the communities with them”.