Mr. Speaker, I will follow the lead of my colleagues from now on and present everything at once. The petitions are on different subjects so I separated them, but I have learned my lesson.
I would like to present a petition on the contamination at the military base in Valcartier. I have petitioners from across Canada. For decades, the Government of Canada used chlorinated solvents including TCE on the Valcartier base and these products dangerous to human health ended up in the environment, contaminating the water table that supplies drinking water to a number of residences in the family housing sector and public establishments of the Valcartier military base.
Because the government has known since 1978 about the risks of water contamination and did nothing about it and because a number of people have had resulting health problems, the petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to recognize the federal government's responsibility. They want the victims to be compensated, the affected sites to be decontaminated, all those who worked at the Valcartier military base and all those who lived in the family housing sector on the base between 1940 and 2002 to be identified and notified that they may have been exposed to drinking water contaminated by these solvents, including and its degradation byproducts, and administer, on a voluntary basis, an epidemiological questionnaire on their health.
