Mr. Speaker, members of the Bloc have to come from a perspective of a government in waiting, and they have a tough time getting around that issue. They will never be the government and they do not have to address their minds to that perspective.
There is a separate issue between describing an alternative budget and criticizing the current budget and whether we shall have an election or not. Technically in the House, the role of Parliament is to approve the spending plans of government. If it does not approve them, then we have an election. Unfortunately, we are caught in that situation with a minority Parliament.
We can clearly outline our criticisms of the budget and people can hear that. They are not stupid. They can read the material. They also can give us the same message that they do not want an election. That is what they have told us. This is not some game-playing from the Conservative Party. If members go out and do some polling in their communities, they will come back and say that it is not time for an election. The people have given us a minority Parliament and we will make it work.
However, we are dealing with the budget. We are dealing with the material and the work at hand in front of us today, and we are outlining alternatives as to how that budget should be addressed.
Concerning the environment, the problem the Bloc has is it continues to confuse pollution and environmental cleanup with the issue of Kyoto and climate change. They are only related at a distance. The issues of Kyoto deal with water vapour and carbon dioxide, which are vital to life, and the theory that perhaps the predominance of that from human activity will change climate to such a detrimental point of view that it will affect the economy and the health of the world. We have to look at how much we are spending on the climate change issue rather than perhaps not spending enough on environmental cleanup, pollution regulations and enforcement.
That is our criticism as far as environmental spending. Let us deal with the very serious issues of clean water, clean air, eliminating brownfields and living responsibly. Then we can address climate change as a lower priority.