Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the comments of the member who just spoke. He spoke about setting precedents and in our relationship with the U.S. it seems there are already precedents set. We have seen it particularly in northern Ontario. It seems to be always when it concerns our natural resources as in the softwood lumber agreement that was signed by the government which is continuing to come back to affect us in a negative way.
In this instance, agreements have been attempted to be worked out. Discussions have happened, but ultimately the U.S. decides that in its best interests it is going to act and affect negatively Canadian jurisdiction.
I am wondering if maybe we are not already too far down that road and given that we are, is there anything the member would suggest we could do, other than simply saying “no” and getting into that kind of debate with the U.S? We seem to always lose with the previous Liberal government and now with the present Conservative government. Are there any other things that we could be doing?
I suggested earlier that we might look at talking to the Americans about maybe using this water in other areas of their country where they are experiencing great shortages and drought, to move it and be creative in how they move it. I am told they are going to spend a lot of money, for example, in the Arizona area, taking the salt out of seawater. In order to get freshwater into that area, they are using up tonnes of water flowing from the icecaps in the Rockies to feed other areas of the U.S. Here is water that they have too much of and we do not want because it is causing us problems. Is there not some way that we could talk to them and convince them to use this water differently?