Madam Speaker, I want to note that just yesterday one of his colleagues spoke about the whole area of nuclear power development. I note in the budget that $126 million is being put aside for nuclear research.
We in Manitoba have a vast supply, as Quebec does, of hydroelectric power, and only half of it has been developed at this point. Even the minister of democratic reform has been on record trying to encourage his own government to develop an east-west power grid. So rather than selling all of our electrical power in Manitoba to the American market, we would be able to share that power with Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C., and we would be able to send the power east into Ontario so that it may not have to develop the nuclear power plants that it is suggesting will be developed in Ontario.
We know that nuclear waste is certainly going to be a big problem. We know that it is going to be almost impossible to get approvals because at the end of the day no citizen in this country will want to have a nuclear plant anywhere near where they live.
Why does the government think it is somehow going to solve the problem by developing nuclear plants when it already knows in advance that the road is going to be a rough one to get approvals and to deal with the waste issue? All it has to do is start building an east-west power grid, something that its own minister of democratic reform has been supporting and cannot convince the government to do.