Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his questions, comments and for highlighting the role of FCM. In fact, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, when I had the opportunity to be the president of the organization, was very active on this issue and intervened in the Supreme Court case in order to help the town of Hudson, which is down the road toward Montreal where I grew up, to get the right to pass the kind of measure that we are talking about here today for all of Canada. The federation's leadership should be noted.
In addition, the federation has extensive programs now so that municipalities can move from the traditional practices to more sustainable forms of gardening and lawn care, et cetera, in their member municipalities.
With regard to examples of the chemicals, my goodness, the list would be awfully long but we certainly would want to highlight chemicals such as 2,4-D as being a cause for concern. It apparently is one that will be made available once again.
I recall the time when I had the opportunity to be on a global panel to examine the impact of persistent organic pollutants. The Innu spoke to us about how the toxic pesticides used over the years in our societies in the developed urban centres had made their way all the way into the mother's milk of the Innu. Even though they do not produce the compounds and do not have lawns, they were the ones suffering the most from our chemicals. These chemicals, when we use them on our lawns, can be transported to people far away in time, in place and in circumstance with devastating results.
The motion we proposed calls for us to take responsibility for some of these impacts and to prevent them in the future.