Mr. Speaker, we learned a lot in that discourse. There were jokes about cancer. There were jokes that not all the hon. member's guns are registered. Cancer as an epidemic or pandemic is explained away as people living longer and there being better records. And he talked about having the science on pesticides. The hon. member also said not to mix some of those pesticides with Coke or to gargle with it. I thank the hon. member for those insightful, instructive comments.
The Pest Control Products Act has to do with the chemical composition of a given pesticide. It has very little to do with the safety of its use. While I do not go all the way in joining with my NDP colleagues with respect to the motion, I want to ask the hon. member why the government, when it finds time to meet with all of the premiers, would not suggest that amendments to the municipalities acts in the various provinces would give them the power to use, or not, pesticides within their municipalities. Why does the government not encourage that? This was recently done in New Brunswick by Bill 62, an act to amend the municipalities act, which speaks very much to and is very similar to the NDP motion.
Instead of telling us not to gargle with pesticides, why does the member not encourage his government to meet with the provinces to amend the municipalities acts where they need to be amended, so that this scourge of factual cancer happening due to pesticide misapplication, not on farms, be attacked? Why was he not more serious about a very serious topic?