Mr. Speaker, I am pleased we are having this debate in the House today. I believe this is a non-partisan issue because all of us have been affected by cancer.
My question for the hon. member is about the Liberal government's strategy which seems to be very much on making good lifestyle choices and focussing cancer as an issue of perhaps giving our children flags, skipping ropes and little eat right posters and we would be better off.
It seems to me that a broader issue has not been addressed. It reminds me of my background in the Timmins region, where we know a lot about cancer. When Ukrainian widows went to the compensation board because their husbands had died of brain cancer, they were told it was the east European diet that killed them. When women from Kirkland Lake, Red Lake, Timmins and Cobalt went to find out why their husbands had died of stomach cancer, or pancreatic cancer, or lung cancer and or throat cancer, they were told it was the bad air in their homes. It was always a lifestyle choice that killed these thousands of men in the mines across northern Ontario. What they were exposed to never did.
Today we are discussing this issue on a very important day, a day when we have heard about the smog deaths across Canada. I do not see anything in the strategies being put forward which deals with the environmental factors and the industrial pollutants. I hear nothing about moving forward, getting beyond the silly notion of voluntary standards and everyone will be happier because of that. I have heard nothing about dealing with the serious polluters in the country who are releasing carcinogens into the atmosphere.
Could the hon. member explain to me how he sees a strategy that has some teeth to ensure that we deal with the main polluters that are creating carcinogens in our atmosphere?