Mr. Speaker, the fact is environmental issues always seem to take a second seat to economic development and economic initiatives in our country and seemingly every other country.
At the end of the day, we have to recognize that the days of companies simply polluting their backyards, then declaring bankruptcy or moving on and giving the taxpayers the bill are hopefully coming to an end. When we quantify the cost of cleanup of all environmental costs, we have not made any money in the whole exercise.
Our critic has indicated that this is not Canada-Colombia. Jordan is a different situation and it is not as bad as Colombia. We want to see this bill move to committee and we want to look at those very issues the member has pointed out, the whole area of environmental issues and also the whole issue of the honour killings in Jordan and other types of human rights and abuses that are detailed in the human rights report put out by the United States Department of State.
The government likes to follow the Americans, so I would think it would pay some attention to the United States Department of State when it comes up with human rights assessments of various countries. We should be looking at this in great detail when we get this into committee, and that should happen fairly soon.