Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in today's debate. It was very interesting to listen to the member for Malpeque talk about his NDP roots. He said that the NDP would turn back the industrial revolution. His party would have taxed it out of existence. Either way it would have been dead under either one of their watches.
It is quite an interesting motion that is before us. The NDP has the right to bring forward any motion it cares to. The NDP always has some arcane thing that will guarantee its members that spot in the corner in perpetuity and never get close to being in government.
The member for Malpeque was making the case that the motion could be extremely intrusive into the way we farm, animal husbandry and a number of other things. The NDP motion states in part that all pesticides which are regulated pursuant to the Pest Control Products Act should be banned within a dwelling house. That is not bad as not too many people keep them in their basement anyway, but the second paragraph states “on any parcel of land on which a dwelling house is situated” and then the next one states “on any place that is within one hundred metres of a parcel of land described in paragraph (ii)”. That is a dwelling house on a parcel of land.
When we travel through the rural countryside there is a lot of crop land and pasture land that comes up to within 100 metres of the house of the farmer or rancher. The NDP is putting restrictions on that farm yard already. In my case, I have a pasture and hay land connected to my house acreage. It would be criminal intent. God forbid, I have my registered gun in the closet and now I have to hide my 2,4-D.
It just escapes me how the NDP could come up with this type of legislation. I know that the leader of the NDP, who is the past president of the FCM, wants to get back in there and make rules and regulations. He wants to be a big fish in a little pond, where here he is a little fish in a big pond and does not get the recognition, so he has to go back and fight some of these fights.
The provinces and municipalities already have the authority to put bans in place so that dangerous products are not used for cosmetic purposes on lawns and so forth and it is not cosmetic use of dangerous stuff. Certainly the labelling has changed on many of the cans of 2,4-D over the years. There is a lot more transparency and accountability in how products are used. Premixed versions can be bought if people are afraid of the real thing. We have used them on the farm for years and we are quite comfortable with them.
I heard a member from one of the ridings in Winnipeg talk about how 50% of our children in Canada are going to get cancer. Scare tactics go a long way with this type of legislation. Certainly the incidence of cancer may be higher for a couple of reasons. We are keeping track and have better records than we used to and people are living longer. At 90 or 95 people are bound to die of something other than old age. It just happens.
I look at this type of motion that the NDP has brought forward. Anyone who does landscaping and has an office on the premises, anyone who has a turf farm and an office, golf courses with rental shacks could not use any type of chemical or pesticide at all. Some of them have gone the biological route and are doing different things. They are using Javex bleach and other things as well, but they have other consequences.
We are tying the hands of many folks who rely on trade and coming up with a product that they can export to the standards that we have with our trading partners, the United States, Japan and others who have much stronger regulatory regimes than we do. We are already going beyond where we need to with regulations.
I will talk about one particular product, 2,4-D. It is one of the oldest chemicals around. It has been registered since 1946. It has been around for 60 plus years. There has not really been any major problem. People should not mix it with Coke; it is not good for them. Most people are smart enough to realize that they should not gargle with the stuff. They should wear gloves and long sleeve shirts. It is called common sense. Those labels are actually on the can or jug. We read that first. Of course, like all men, we like to read maps to get directions so we always read those instructions first. We know enough to be careful with this stuff. There are a lot more noxious problems out there as well.
I drove in this morning and it is the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa. There are beautiful gardens of tulips, yet right across the road the city's lawn is polluted with dandelions because the city no longer sprays anything. It has fallen under this regime. It is the city's choice. It is the city's decision and the citizens of Ottawa will sink or swim with that, but it is the city's decision to make.
The NDP, in presenting this motion, wants the criminal law powers of the federal government to trample over everybody's rights and enforce its twisted logic and that somehow if we do all of this, everybody will be better off.
That is okay, but all of this has to be based on some sort of sound scientific process. We have that through the Canadian government in the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. While we may have month by month and case by case battles with that particular agency, it has done a decent job in staying up to speed and getting on top of things. There are a lot of new products out there that the PMRA is very lax on. It is always somewhere between 200 and 400 applications behind. There are brand new, less toxic materials out there that need to get in play in Canada. It is up to the PMRA to move ahead with that, but to totally ban or be able to add to or subtract from this list at the whim of the NDP, or whatever government decides it wants to go there, does not make sound policy.
I know the NDP has a problem with the act that came in four years ago. That act is constantly under review. 2-4,D itself has been reviewed a number of times and always to the betterment of the people using it. The labelling changes, as I mentioned before. There are significant changes in the way we handle and use 2,4-D.
There is a tremendous process that is put in play to register and re-register any of these products on an ongoing basis. The NDP needs to get caught up with that a little. They are always at the forefront, the vanguard of leading the charge on something out there that is going to get us if we do not regulate it out of existence.
Another case in point is the Cartagena protocol. The NDP was really supportive of that and wanted to implement it. That is a global definition of the use and non-use of genetically modified organisms. The problem is we have been doing that for 12 years and still a basic definition has not been agreed to globally as to what a modified organism is. Until we get the framework right, we cannot start hanging the drapes and putting the window dressing in place.
That is what the New Democrats tend to do with these types of motions that come forward. They are well intentioned but miss the mark by 100 miles because they tend to trample on everybody else's jurisdictional rights: the provinces, the municipalities, the RMs in the rural areas and those types of things.
What the New Democrats are looking for is that criminal law power. The thing they are missing is the scientific process that leads to the use or non-use of any of these pesticides and chemicals, whether it is for cosmetic use or use down home on the farm.
Certainly we have to be cognizant of the fact that there can be problems. We need to make sure that they are not tank mixed with certain other products that will incite some reactions. There are a tremendous number of problems out there that people can get into. However, common sense should prevail and science should prevail to make sure that we are doing the right things at the right time.