Debates of Nov. 28th, 2006

Concurrence in Vote 10--Department of Natural Resources

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the hon. minister a question in reference to his prologue where he talked about the Prime Minister's statements about Canada being an energy superpower.

Does he also take into account the fact that in his natural resources energy outlook, the situation with natural gas in Canada is so critical that by 2015 we may have to abrogate the proportionality clause in NAFTA in order to keep our own homes and businesses heated in the winter?

When the minister talks about a superpower, he is probably talking about the oil sands where we see development that basically has one of the lowest energy returns for investments in the whole world in terms of a source of fossil fuels. When we are talking about an energy superpower, we are talking about a country where things are not going exactly right.

We saw the Prime Minister over in Russia in July trying to set up a deal with Vladimir Putin for liquefied natural gas to export into Canada. That does not sound like a superpower. It sounds like we have a country with serious conditions in our energy industries that may not be apparent right now but, by the minister's own natural resources outlook, are coming very quickly for Canada.

I would love to support the minister's budget but I want to know that his budget will be directed in a fashion that can return to Canadians an assurance that they will have a future in the kinds of energies that we are producing. What is this superpower that we are talking about?

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are one of the world's leading energy suppliers, whether it be in oil and gas, in uranium, in hydro or in developing technology for renewable energy.

It is interesting that the member for Western Arctic does not support some of these programs. We are working on programs specifically designed for very remote communities that do not have to burn diesel. We need to look at alternative systems on both solar and wind programs where they would support specific programs, to support the very communities in his constituency that he is speaking against.

We have a vast country with some very remote areas. We are developing systems that can help these people like they have never been helped before. I am quite amazed that the member, who comes from an area such as this, would actually vote against this and not support these types of initiatives.

Canada is an independent country. We have amazingly vast resources but we want to develop them in a sustainable way that will benefit Canadians. We want to ensure that we continue to promote our natural resources, develop our energy as clean energy and yet continue to be a world leader, and that is exactly what we are doing. I would encourage the member to support the motion and not vote against renewable energy, such as wind, and the things that are helping our environment.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his hard work and contributions to the clean air act . As the House knows, it is Environment Canada and the environment minister who creates the policy but it is the Minister of Natural Resources who actually implements the programs.

The previous government made $6 billion worth of announcements and spent $1.6 billion. There was a huge gap between what was announced and what was actually spent. The minister shared with us that by spending that $1.6 billion, the Liberals ended up with emission rates going through the roof. They did absolutely nothing.

The minister has been here for a long time and I was wondering if he knows why the Liberals do absolutely nothing but make a lot of bluster. Has he ever seen them actually do anything? Why would they want to cut environmental programs?

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will only say that Canadians want us to look forward. They do not want to talk about the past. They want to know what we will do. We are delivering initiatives that will have direct meaning.

We started with our clean air act to regulate every sector. We are developing initiatives to support renewable energy, to help energy efficiency, to support science and technology and to clean up some of our dirty energy. The last government's record speaks for itself. Under its watch, greenhouse gas emissions skyrocketed to 35%. That will not happen under this administration.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the minister about a very important project under study in my riding of Palliser, the poly-generation plant at Belle Plaine. It will a $3 billion project if it gets off the ground. I know the minister is intimately involved in this process. It will be the biggest project in the province's history.

the government has been asked to study the feasibility of this new science. What will happen to that study if the members opposite are successful in removing $64 million out of the minister's budget?

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. members vote against this kind of funding for our department, none of these types of projects can be funded. They would be voting against the cleanest forms of renewable energy, and I would advise them against that. It is good for the environment to support it.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to speak to the motion. I put forward a notice of motion that the NDP intended to oppose this budget line in the main estimates process for the simple reason that, within the context of this pile of money the minister was talking about, is the budget for the Chrysotile Institute. It used to be known as the Asbestos Institute. I for one will not vote for anything that puts money into the asbestos industry in this country.

I call the money the government keeps shovelling to the asbestos industry corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. I worked in the asbestos mines as a young man. I feel strongly that they were lying to us about the health hazard of asbestos then, just as they are lying about it to this day.

The fact is, asbestos kills. It is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. Even though the industry tries to change the name and have everyone believe that the asbestos mined in Quebec is somehow less hazardous or more benign, so to speak, it is not. Chrysotile asbestos causes asbestosis, mesothelioma and all the terrible health hazards that we know asbestos causes.

The fact is most Canadians believe we have banned asbestos. The mine that I worked in closed due to natural market forces. Nobody in the developed world was buying this killer any more. Most of the world is banning asbestos in all of its forms. The entire European Union has banned asbestos in all its forms, as well as Japan, Australia, South Africa. Most developed nations have come to their senses and banned asbestos.

I hang my head in shame to say that Canada is still one of the world's largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. It varies from second to third from year to year, but I believe it is currently the second largest in the world. The Canadian government is acting like globe-trotting propagandists in supporting the asbestos industry and helping to dump it into unsuspecting underdeveloped nations where there is little or no health and safety legislation.

To me it is morally and ethically reprehensible that the Government of Canada is spending money in the budget of the Minister of Natural Resources to promote the asbestos industry abroad, in both hard and soft money. Even though the budget line seems relatively small on the direct money the government is giving to the asbestos industry, the soft money is enormous because it sends teams of lawyers all over the world to stop other countries from banning asbestos. It in fact uses our foreign embassies as places to hold trade shows to promote asbestos in underdeveloped and third world countries.

My colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, calls the asbestos industry the tobacco industry's evil twin and there is good reason for that. Both of these industries have made a fortune selling a product that they know full well kills people. Both have taken part in a wholesale fraud based on phony science, misrepresentation and have promoted their product in this way.

I am sorry the minister is not present to hear this, but part of the problem is there is a rat in the woodpile in the minister's office. His assistant deputy minister, Mr. Gary Nash, is the founder and first CEO of the Asbestos Institute. He is an asbestos apologist. He is a corporate stooge for the asbestos industry. He has weaseled his way into the minister's office and writes the papers which brief the minister on asbestos.

I am here to say that there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. I do not care if it is mined in Quebec. Quebec asbestos kills just like all other asbestos kills. It is just that Quebeckers have been subjected to misinformation to the point where they somehow believe their own propaganda. This is the real shame.

The clinic in Thetford Mines served all five of the active mines. In the 1970s it was found to not be telling victims of asbestos when it would diagnose miners with asbestosis or mesothelioma. Because there is no treatment and it is a death sentence, it would not tell miners so they would keep working. When the clinic was challenged on this, it said that it was out of kindness, that it did not want to alarm the family. It was better to let the guy keep working until he dropped than alarm his family that he was sick.

The horror of asbestosis and mesothelioma is the latency period is cruelly long and the effects are devastating.

I have an article from the Toronto Star on the amount of money that has been shovelled into the asbestos industry. It says, “A $30 million campaign aims to take the curse off asbestos”. It is cursed because the rest of the world woke up.

The rest of the world knows that asbestos is the biggest industrial killer the world has ever known and has ever seen. Yet the government and all previous Canadian governments have been so enamoured with this evil material, which never should have been taken out of the ground to begin with, and they have pushed it, promoted it and dumped it into the third world. They have spent my tax dollars to promote asbestos, to promote death.

We are exporting human misery on a massive scale, with every shipment of asbestos that leaves the country, at 220,000 tonnes per year. One microscopic asbestos fibre can cause mesothelioma. We cannot even get our minds around how much we are dumping this into third world countries.

I know the great asbestos strikes in Quebec were called the first shot in the silent revolution. I know the emotional attachment that nationalists in Quebec assign to asbestos, but it is irrational.

I urge Canadians to finally wake up and see asbestos for what it is. It is a killer. The minister and the rat in the woodpile, as I call him, his ADM, the founder and first president of the Asbestos Institute, is now working in the employ of the minister, advising him about the wonderful benefits of this miracle product—

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if I could get a ruling from the Speaker as to whether the reference the member for Winnipeg Centre has made about the assistant deputy minister of the Department of Natural Resources, Mr. Gary Nash, is unparliamentary.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member for Etobicoke North. I know he is champing at the bit to participate in this debate. He is next on the roster and he will have all the chance he needs to make his comments at that time.

Right now, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre has the floor and we will continue.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I trust that will not be counted against the time of my speech.

If I am using strong words of language, it is because I am personally ashamed and frustrated at my government and what it is doing with this industry. As I said, we send teams of Canadian lawyers at great taxpayers' expense to Rotterdam, Geneva, all around the world. Wherever people are working to have asbestos banned, we send these expensive teams of lawyers to resist it.

When France announced it wanted to ban asbestos in 1999, the Government of Canada went to the WTO and intervened. It claimed it was an unfair trade limitation. Where would we sell our asbestos if France banned it? Fortunately for the French people France won and Canada lost at the WTO and banned asbestos in all its forms, including the chrysotile asbestos mined at Thetford Mines in Quebec.

There is no safe level of this killer product. This is what motivated me today to move this motion in the natural resources mines and minerals category of the main estimates. I want my country to stop promoting the asbestos industry. I want my country to be able to hold its head high when it goes to international forums. I want my country to join the global campaign to ban asbestos in all its forms.

We are so stupid about asbestos in this country. We have contaminated our own Parliament Buildings to the point where they are not really fit for human habitation. My office in West Block is so riddled with asbestos that we really should not be in there. Asbestos was sprayed on virtually every commercial and institutional building in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In our zeal to be boosters of asbestos, we contaminated schools, hospitals, public government buildings and our own Parliament Buildings.

We were spraying it on to steel beams for fireproofing not realizing that it crumbles 15 or 20 years later. It becomes friable and it comes down on our suspended acoustic ceiling. When we change a light bulb now, we get a face full of asbestos fibres. These fibres are so small and dangerous. It takes eight hours for an asbestos fibre to drop from the ceiling to the floor. That is how tiny they are. They are invisible. We cannot see them but they can and will kill us.

The province of Quebec has the highest rate of mesothelioma among women in the world. The province of Quebec has the fourth highest rate of mesothelioma among men in the world. This is from a 2005 report of Quebec's national institute of public health. So do not tell me that Quebec asbestos is somehow benign because it seems to kill Quebeckers just as readily as it kills people in Thailand, India and the other places where this killer material is sent.

I worked in the asbestos mines. We worked in clouds of the stuff. Not everybody gets sick. Fortunately, God willing, I will not get sick from asbestosis, but the latency period of 25 to 30 years means that everybody in this room could be affected from their exposure just because of their tenure in these buildings.

I will never support an estimates process, a budget or a bill that contains money, corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. I will not buy it. I will not be a part of it. I refuse to vote for it. All of the laudable things that our Minister of Natural Resources talked about are spoiled by the fact that he continues to subsidize, promote and spend taxpayers' money on this evil industry.

I have read a great deal about the history because I feel personally affected by this. It was McGill University that first started raising questions about whether or not asbestos is bad for people. Why? The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company paid for and created a new laboratory at McGill University to study asbestos. Guess what? The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was having trouble underwriting asbestos workers because they were dropping like flies, so it needed somebody to put the big question mark there. The same way the tobacco industry did. Any issue has a scientist somewhere it can buy to tell people what they want to hear.

The latest report being pushed by the associate deputy minister to the minister is a report that cost $1 million. The Chrysotile Institute paid $1 million for a report to raise the question saying that chrysotile maybe should not be viewed in the same way that other categories of asbestos are viewed. The rest of the world does not agree.

I gave a speech this year at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, among the world's leading authorities in asbestos related disease and I asked everyone that I could whether it was true that chrysotile kills. Every one of them, from Dr. Selikoff's own assistants down the line said, “Yes, chrysotile asbestos kills in the same way that crocidolite and tremolite and the other asbestos categories kill”. There is no safe level of asbestos. I will not tolerate voting in favour of any particular budget line that includes asbestos.

The public and members of the House of Commons should be made aware that we have such blinders on when it comes to this mineral that we even opposed having it listed as a hazardous material at the Rotterdam convention. The Rotterdam convention is the United Nations gathering that lists hazardous chemicals for export, et cetera. It does not try to ban these chemicals. It says that if this product is to be sold and exported, the purchaser has to have prior informed consent.

Canada objected to asbestos being put on that list of hazardous materials. Again, for the third time in a row, we sent teams of Department of Justice lawyers to Rotterdam to oppose even warning the people to whom we sell this stuff that it might be harmful. Imagine, how selfish is the face of greed that we are seeing here. What kind of a business would be so irresponsible as to refuse to put a material that is a known carcinogen and the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known, on a list of hazardous materials so that the people it sells it to have a fighting chance to take some precautions so they will not inhale asbestos fibres?

When I was working in the asbestos mine, my foreman had already had one lung removed and he went back to work. He came to us from Thetford Mines. Ours was a new asbestos mine in Yukon. We needed experienced asbestos miners to show us how to open up this new mine. Frenchie was his nickname, nothing derogatory, but when he came to us he only had one lung. He had already had a lung removed from having worked in the asbestos mines before.

I will simply say that many of us in the NDP will never support corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. The asbestos industry is a corporate serial killer. I am sick of Canadian government officials acting as globe-trotting propagandists, as merchants of death, these guys that are exporting human misery by the tonne. I will not tolerate it. This country should ban asbestos altogether in all of its forms.

At the very least, in a letter I sent to the Minister of Natural Resources, we should never sell it to any country that has not signed the ILO protocols on the safe handling of asbestos. None of the customers Canada sells our product to have ever ratified ILO convention No. 162. This is the irresponsible nature of the industry here.

The final point I will make is there are safe alternatives to using asbestos. Most of the asbestos we sell is used in cement asbestos mixtures to make asbestos pipe and asbestos roofing tile. There is a cellulose wood fibre, Douglas fir, the waste material that rots on the forest floor throughout B.C., which is the perfect binding agent for cement asbestos products. In fact, there is a Weyerhaeuser mill in Kamloops, B.C. that is on the verge of closing. Weyerhaeuser Canada told me that that mill would create 400 jobs if it could only sell its wood alternative cellulose product for a cement binding agent in these products.

We do not have to peddle this killer product mined in Quebec. We could sell this neutral, benign, safe product, an environmentally correct product from the Weyerhaeuser mill in Kamloops. We could satisfy the world's needs for concrete products without exposing unsuspecting third world workers to the misery that is death by asbestosis.

Having said that, I do not want to drag this out any further. I have already said that I think it is morally and ethically reprehensible to be dumping this product into underdeveloped nations. We should do what the rest of the developed world is doing and ban asbestos in all its forms. Let us follow the progressive nations and not be a part of this terrible asbestos mafia any longer.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Before I call questions and comments, I just want to refer to the point of order that was raised by the member for Etobicoke North. I have asked for the blues and if necessary, I will come back to the House on this issue.

On questions and comments, the hon. President of the Treasury Board.

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say at the outset that I appreciated the intervention, as I always do, of the member for Winnipeg Centre. I also appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the health effects of asbestos. I appreciate and admire the passion and commitment he brings to this issue and so many other issues.

I have a lot of constituents who work in this building and others in the capital where there is asbestos. I share his concern about the health effects, particularly as it relates to not just my colleagues but those who serve the public in this building and others. I appreciated learning more.

He does remind me of a fellow by the name Peter Kormos who is the New Democratic Party house leader in the Ontario legislature. I used to sit beside Kormos in the Ontario legislature, from which I resigned a year ago tomorrow. They would have to keep us apart because he was the NDP house leader and I was the Conservative house leader and we would get into trouble and get tossed out occasionally.

I want to talk about the motions on the notice paper. The member for Winnipeg Centre has two concerns. One motion deals with $256 million under natural resources but there is another motion that the member for Winnipeg Centre has put forward and I am afraid we might not have time to debate it.

I am very interested and open to even considering supporting him on the $38,206,000 cut to the Senate. I wonder whether he could go into that a little bit tonight.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, hope we get around to the second motion we put forward today which I will speak to very briefly and explain. I perhaps am one of the only members of the New Democratic Party who does not believe we should abolish the Senate, or at least I did not until the last couple of months. I have had many arguments with my colleagues about our long-standing policy within the New Democratic Party that the unelected, undemocratic Senate should be scrapped and abolished. Until my frustrating experience with Bill C-2, the federal accountability act, I was a defender of the Senate to some degree.

I have now put forward this notice of opposition to the Senate. I think we should scrap the whole kit and caboodle after my experience, frankly. I have come around four-square with my colleagues of the New Democratic Party. It is a waste of money, a waste of resources. It is an obstacle and a barrier to democracy. I am furious with that other house, the other chamber.

I put forward a motion that does not scrap the Senate completely because the building itself is beautiful. My motion says that we should eliminate all the salaries, all the office budgets, all of the expenses and certainly the travel budgets of every senator. We might still have a Senate--we would not need a constitutional change for this--the senators just would not be able to do any harm any more because they would not have a budget to screw up what we do.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Richmond—Arthabaska, as you said so well, is a riding where people will find the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos. Recently, the people of Asbestos had to turn their attention to a short-lived debate: some people wanted to change the name of the municipality of Asbestos because of everything that has happened internationally, including the bad reputation asbestos has had for many years.

We have just been subjected to an exercise in pure demagogy by the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, who, yet again, is being the anti-asbestos champion par excellence. I did not think we could find in Quebec or even in Canada—he comes from Winnipeg, of course—someone who would run down the product of asbestos as much as the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre just did.

I am insulted on behalf of the entire population of Asbestos. It is a proud community that has decided to keep its name on the grounds that the product it now produces is called chrysotile.

Since the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre said he worked in an asbestos mine, he must know very well that the products that were extracted in the 1950s and the 1960s were amphiboles. Houses that were insulated with asbestos, with the friable products, contain fibres that stay in the human body for a long time, according to studies on biopersistance, and do cause asbestosis, cancer, etc.—in short, health problems. Today the product in question is called chrysotile. It is like cement. This product does not crumble and it is totally safe. It has to be used safely.

I would like the hon. member to tell me whether he knows the difference between the two products because what is being made today, in Asbestos and in Thetford Mines, is no longer an amphibole; it is chrysotile. It is not the same thing and the people of Quebec defend this product.

I would like the hear the hon. member say a few words about this.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question gives me the opportunity to explain to him how terribly wrong he is. The asbestos that was mined at Thetford Mines, Jeffrey Mine and all those mines, frankly, was chrysotile, then and now. The Yukon asbestos mine that I worked in was chrysotile. The asbestos mine that closed in Newfoundland recently was chrysotile. It has always been chrysotile in Canada. We do not mine any other type of asbestos.

There are five types of asbestos. Chrysotile is right in the middle of the range, but it is a type of asbestos. It is misleading and it is part of the spin that the industry is trying to put on it to isolate and separate chrysotile and say that this asbestos is benign and all these other types of asbestos will kill us.

It is the same asbestos. It is the same fibre. We put it in the fluffing machines. We make it into materials. We mix it with cement as a binding agent. All those uses are the same, so whoever got to my colleague has been giving him misinformation and trying to convince the world that there is something okay about Quebec asbestos. There is nothing okay about Quebec asbestos. It kills just like any other asbestos kills.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, following the example of my colleague for Richmond—Arthabaska, the points raised by my colleague for Winnipeg Centre lead me to ask this question. Has my colleague for Winnipeg-Centre taken into account the fact that there exists scientific proof dating back to the 1980s? I am referring to the Ontario Royal Commission. They were not medical specialists financed by the industry, as my colleague would lead us to believe, but independent institutions.

Then he is talking about replacement fibres without knowing whether or not they are regulated. We do not know the risks they pose or their impact on human beings.

Does my colleague take this troubling information into account when he makes a speech such as the one he has given tonight?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, misinformation and faulty and tainted research have been the biggest part of the problem in the struggle to have asbestos banned. The studies my colleague talks about were paid for by the industry, the institute. When we look at the rest of the world, we see that it is only a couple of Canadian scientists who say that chrysotile is benign. I know the studies the member is talking about. These are well known and well documented and they have been exposed as being false and wrong.

The best one to look at has been done by the institute of national health in the province of Quebec. In June 2005, finally, the lie was exposed by scientists who are not bought and paid for by the industry, scientists who are genuine and sincere. They make the argument that chrysotile asbestos kills, that it is a known carcinogen and no one should be exposed to a single fibre. The only safe threshold limit of asbestos to humans is zero, and no industry can guarantee that it will not expose people to it.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that asbestos, or his view of asbestos, is a key issue for my colleague from Winnipeg Centre. But whether we like it or not, there are various types of asbestos.

Chrysotile is part of the asbestos industry. We should examine how it has been used and how we use it today. This evening, we must decide if we are going to cut $250,000 in funding to the Asbestos Institute. This institute includes representatives of the Canadian producers of chrysotile asbestos, unions and the Governments of Canada and of Quebec.

I know that my colleague has roots in the labour movement. I can say that those heading up this committee include individuals such as Gerard Docquier, who was the national director of the steelworkers in Canada, and Clément Godbout, the former director of the steelworkers in Quebec. We can have different opinions in the House of Commons and remain respectful. The money that was used, the mission—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst should know that Question Period is over. However, I will allow him a moment to finish his remarks so that the member for Winnipeg Centre may respond. However, he will have to condense all his arguments.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief.

The asbestos institute is dedicated to promoting the safe use of chrysotile asbestos in Canada and around the world. That is the institute's mandate.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre should be aware that the clock has run out, but he will have a short moment to respond.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will summarize. I believe that Canada should get out of the asbestos industry. It is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known.

When I was a trade union representative, I would not let the employees I represented anywhere near that material. When I worked in the asbestos mine, we kicked out our union and brought in a new union because the old union would not admit that asbestos was a killer. There is union representation and there is union representation, and I believe the first obligation is to look after the best interests of the employee, not the employer. Whatever working representative is trying to defend the asbestos industry is looking after the best interests of the employer, not the men and women who deserve to be saved from exposure to asbestos.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a fairly wide-reaching debate about the estimates of the Treasury Board, the Senate, and the complete estimates of the Department of Natural Resources, so it really has not focused much on the emotion of the member for Winnipeg Centre.

First let me say that the member for Winnipeg Centre made a very disparaging remark about Mr. Gary Nash. I know Mr. Nash personally. He is a very well respected leader within the mining industry in Canada. I know that the Speaker is going to be looking at the blues and I would hope that the member for Winnipeg Centre will retract those remarks.

However, what I find most disappointing is that when the Minister of Natural Resources came in to debate this motion, he tried to indicate that what we were debating was the full estimates of the Department of Natural Resources of $256 million and some. He knows that is not what we are debating here today.

I think the line that he took was somewhat disingenuous, because he did not want to debate the question around chrysotile asbestos. That is what the motion from the member for Winnipeg Centre calls for: a reduction in vote 10 in the amount of $250,000. That $250,000 is a far cry from $250 million. Some members seem to be mixing up the zeros, but that is what the member is really talking about.

The reason I said the line the minister took was disingenuous is that we know he did not want to debate the topic of chrysotile asbestos. It is a very sensitive issue.

I believe this is a very serious and important issue. The minister should have said that chrysotile asbestos is neither prohibited nor strictly regulated in Canada. It is used under controlled conditions.

He should have said that domestic regulations are applied to strictly control chrysotile exposure and to ensure safe handling of the product. This approach based on controlled use guarantees the safe use of chrysotile in Canada.

He should also have said that Canada provides importing countries with information about the safe use of chrysotile and supports the work of the Asbestos Institute, which promotes the use of asbestos around the world.

This is a serious question that has been posed by the member for Winnipeg Centre. He obviously has some personal experience working in an asbestos mine. It is a very serious and important question, but the minister did not want to deal with it. He wanted to deal with the full body of his estimates.

There I must say that the minister was again very disappointing. If he had read the order paper he would have seen that what we were debating was the chrysotile asbestos motion, not the full estimates of the department. If he had read it, he would have seen that the $256 million under Natural Resources “in the Main Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007 be concurred in”. That amount is not in question. It is the motion of the $250,000 that is in question. The minister knows full well that this is what is at issue here.

I had an experience the other day with the minister. He came to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources to do his estimates. He talked about the future of carbon capture and sequestration. He talked about all the work that was going to be done with energy efficiency in the industrial sector.

I was sitting there with the plans and priorities book that was prepared by the department. I looked at those two particular line items, industrial energy efficiency and CO₂ carbon capture and sequestration, and lo and behold, to my complete surprise and shock, those items were being cut from his plans and priorities. My only feeling, which I expressed to the minister at the time, was that perhaps he missed that meeting when the departmental officials put together the book and sought his approval. Presumably and hopefully they sought his approval, but the other point is that maybe he does not really know what his department is doing. This certainly was an indication of that.

In terms of the debate this evening, I am sure his departmental officials tried to brief him, but maybe he had other engagements. Maybe he had other commitments and he could not be briefed on what we are actually debating here in the House today.

The minister talks about being an energy superpower. We have heard this from the Prime Minister. Does it not have a nice ring to it? As a proud Canadian, I would like us to be an energy superpower. But, and this is the big but, it has to be sustainably driven and it has to be environmentally responsible. What do we hear from the minister on those points? We do not hear one iota. We do not hear a peep.

He talks about how we are going capture all the carbon and sequester all the carbon in the oil sands of Alberta. Is that not a nice thing to say? It sort of rolls off the tongue. It is actually what we should be doing, but we went to the budget and his plans and priorities and he has been cutting those programs.

He talked about how we are going to recycle all the water. Is that not a nice notion? That is what we should be doing, but what is he doing about it? Nothing. He is doing absolutely nothing. Our committee has been hearing witness upon witness and they all say no, we do not have the power and we are heading into a very difficult situation but no one is really providing any guidance.

Where is the federal government? Where is the Minister of Natural Resources in providing leadership on this file? Why could the Minister of Natural Resources of Canada not call the ministers in Alberta? Why could he not call the oil and gas industry together with the stakeholder groups, the aboriginal peoples, the energy industry and the town of Fort McMurray and sit down and say, “Look, we have a problem here in Fort McMurray with the oil sands. We should really put things on hold until we have these technologies in place where we can recycle the water so that we are not draining the Athabasca River basin”.

The minister talks about how we are recycling 90% of the water. That is not the case. Ninety per cent of the water might be going into tailings ponds, but the tailings ponds have to settle, and while the oil sands are being grown, with production supposed to quadruple by 2015, the new starters, the new entrants, will have to create their own tailings ponds. Besides that, there are some difficulties in the settling out of the tailings ponds so that this money can be recycled back into the river.

It just makes sense. If we were to pick up a newspaper or talk to anybody out there, they would tell us that the Athabasca River basin is being sadly and terribly depleted. We do not have to be rocket scientists in this Parliament. I do not think the Prime Minister would ask his minister to be a rocket scientist. He would just ask him to use a bit of common sense, show a bit of leadership, and bring the parties together. The bitumen will be there forever.

I was just up there with some colleagues from the House. If one travels around to see it, it is quite an astounding engineering and management feat and I take my hat off to those people. We should be proud of it, except that moving forward, we should have the maturity and common sense to say that we have to sit down and talk about further expansion because there are some severe issues at stake. I did not even mention the infrastructure and the social problems that are occurring in Fort McMurray, which I am sure the minister knows all about.

We should try to appeal to the oil and gas industry. What about the cost pressures that they are facing? Maybe it would make sense to sort of cool this down a bit while we get our act together. Maybe the federal government could help with the acceleration, the development, and the deployment of these CO₂ carbon capture and sequestration technologies and the water recycling technologies. What about the use of our natural gas?

Here is the Minister of Natural Resources, from whom I have not heard a peep. Maybe he has written an article in the Energy Times or something, but I have not seen anything that talks about whether the way we are using natural gas in Fort McMurray is the best use of our natural gas resources in Canada. Everybody seems to know that it is a very inefficient use of our natural gas. We have very volatile natural gas markets. We know that people all across Canada are having to pay excessive prices for natural gas and there is a very volatile market.

There have been discussions up in Fort McMurray, perhaps none in the halls of the Department of Natural Resources or the minister's office, about maybe replacing natural gas with nuclear plants. Where is the minister on that? I have not heard a thing.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

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