Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the previous comments I made on the appointment of Mr. Murray to the national round table on the environment and the economy by discussing his history and track record in the city of Winnipeg.
As I have already stated, Selkirk—Interlake borders Winnipeg on the north side. Mr. Murray, under his watch when he was mayor, was the author and the individual responsible for the pollution that came out of the city of Winnipeg and was dumped into the Red River. It continues to this day.
During his 10 years as mayor, Mr. Murray had the opportunity to address the problem of making sure that we had proper sewage treatment in the city of Winnipeg to protect against the overflow and spillage of raw sewage into the Red River which, by and large, moves through my riding and goes straight into Lake Winnipeg. It affects the commercial fishery. My kids swim in that lake and they are swimming with raw sewage from the city of Winnipeg. People go there because it is a tourist attraction. Mr. Murray could have made the choice to invest in infrastructure to fix the environmental hazards that the city of Winnipeg has inherent in its system.
Mr. Murray has been out of the job for about a year now. Every time we have more than two inches of rainfall in the north part of the city, because the entire infrastructure is connected, the gutters drain into the sewage system, the sewage system overflows and it goes as a direct discharge into the Red River. This is unforgiveable. Mr. Murray had the choice but instead he focused in on his own pet projects.
A good example of that is the Esplanade Riel bridge that he built in Winnipeg. He spent $1 million in building a toilet. He put in place on this footbridge a restaurant that nobody would lease. It is a monolith that will sit there in recognition of the type of job that is Mr. Murray's legacy to the city of Winnipeg: a restaurant that nobody wants, a $1 million toilet that is not being used, and we still have an infrastructure problem with sewage being dumped straight into the Red River. How could the Prime Minister even consider him as someone to fill such an important role as chairman of the NRTEE? This is an individual who should be chastised, not rewarded. This is someone who should be fined, not given a plum patronage position.
I am also quite concerned about the involvement of the parliamentary secretaries on committees. The environment parliamentary secretary, who sits on the environment committee, was in the House making quite the impassioned plea, saying that we were playing politics. Just about everybody in the House has rejected Mr. Murray's appointment to the round table and yet the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of the Environment has the gall to stand in his place and criticize us for making this an issue in the House of Commons.
The environment committee has already rejected Mr. Murray's appointment. The Prime Minister went ahead and ignored the recommendations of the committee. We want to bring it before the House so that the House can make the decision and then give direction to the Prime Minister that this individual is not acceptable for this position.
It has been said over and over again that the Prime Minister promised to fix the democratic deficit. The Prime Minister said that he would put an end to cronyism and ensure that it was not who one knew in the PMO who got the jobs. However the pork-barrelling goes on. We still have appointee after appointee, who are all Liberal flunkies, getting prime government jobs. That is unacceptable and it is something Canadians across the country will reject when we go to the polls.