Madam Speaker, with respect to my colleague's remarks, I suspect that anything can be a poison if it is taken at the wrong time, in the wrong place or in the wrong quantity. However he is talking about smog.
I am the member for Peterborough which is downwind of the general Toronto area. Many years ago, smog was a phenomenon of downtown Toronto. It no longer is. The air in downtown Toronto is quite clean. It moved out to the suburbs and for quite a long time there was smog in the suburbs. However, today in Ontario, where I live, on several occasions the peak smog, the peak pollution has been in Peterborough and villages like Omemee and Lakefield, places which perhaps my colleague does not know. These are tiny rural communities. One of the reasons for that is that we are downwind of Highway 401. Ground level ozone, which he mentioned and which he knows is a poison, now develops around our lakes where we have cottages and things of this type.
I know he is tied to the oil industry, but would it not be better environmentally and better economically for the oil industry, which he so well represents, to use oil as a base in the petrochemical industry rather than simply burning it and polluting the environment?