Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Essex for his intervention on this motion brought forward by my colleague from Red Deer. The analogy that he used, saying that the Liberal leopards cannot change their spots on patronage, could also be extended to say that the Liberal Party is suffering from leprosy and they rot from that leprosy in cronyism. It just continues to go on and on. It is what is causing us to have such a bad reputation in government because of all this patronage.
My riding of Selkirk--Interlake borders the north side of Winnipeg. Mr. Murray was the mayor of Winnipeg during some of the greatest catastrophes that happened environmentally in that city. Of course, my riding had to handle all of the waste and environmental pollution that the city of Winnipeg caused under his watch, essentially dumping raw sewage directly into the Red River which flowed into Lake Winnipeg, which is a huge tourist area as well as a large commercial fishery and a sport and recreation zone. That cost the province dearly.
I am quite concerned that this mayor did not care about the environment when he was mayor. He had the chance to fix it through infrastructure, but instead took money and built a $1 million toilet on a footbridge that did nothing for the city of Winnipeg. Essentially, he proved to the community that he did not care about the environment, that he did not care about the pollution the city of Winnipeg was causing for the rest of the province. I want my colleague to comment on that.
Second, there were some rather hard comments made earlier today by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment. I am quite concerned that the parliamentary secretary is not sitting on this committee in an unbiased fashion. He is there as a mouthpiece, as a lapdog for the ministry. He is there representing the minister, not himself, and by and large representing the wishes of the Prime Minister. Does my colleague believe that the parliamentary secretary should be sitting on these committees and having any input into that matter?