Mr. Speaker, I am quite impressed by my colleague for Mississauga South who, in all humility, said that it was unreasonable to expect members of Parliament to be absolutely expert and thorough on legislation when it comes before them at second reading. I thought that his rendition of the analysis of the bill indicated quite thorough research. I compliment him for that because it speaks to the capacity of members of Parliament to do thorough work.
On the basis of the thorough work concept, I wonder if the member would go over one of the issues that he struck for me. I have already indicated that I will support the bill going to committee but he pointed out that the bill would not protect the environment and that it has very few measures that are actually proactive. However, it is a bill that would penalize polluters in the shipping business. He took pains to point out, not only the volume of shipping of product but also the number of people currently participating in the tourism business and therefore causing shippers to extend themselves much further.
From a commercial point of view, that is all well and dandy. However, he did point out that one particular industry, the oil tanker business, poses a serious threat. I hope I did not mishear him but I heard him say that an environmental disaster, such as the one represented by the Exxon Valdez many years ago, cost $2.5 billion to clean up and yet the liabilities listed here are for a maximum of $1.5 billion from a fund and $545 million per incident.
Since my colleague has great capacity in the accounting field, he would be able to tell us what that $2.5 billion would be worth today. Would he suggest to all of us that we should amend the legislation to increase the liability amount or, perhaps more significantly, ask the government to put some very specific measures into the legislation that would be proactive from the point of view of protecting the environment from potential abusers and disaster creators?