Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the hon. member for his kind words for the work that we both did, and in fact that the Liberals did on the environment committee to raise the profile of an issue which actually had something to do with source water protection, and that was the monitoring of the impact of the oil sands on the Athabasca River watershed.
I travelled with the committee. We went up to Fort Chipewyan, and first nations citizens there were telling us that they feared that their source water was being polluted by deposits of deleterious substances from the oil sands industry.
The lesson of Walkerton teaches us that we need government supervision. Whenever we decide to cut back on government expenditures, we should be very careful not to cut back in areas that affect people's health. We should always give the benefit of the doubt to proper regulation and oversight by government over other considerations.
I would like to end with a little anecdote. We have heard of Walkerton. We have heard of problems in first nations communities. I live in a suburban riding. My riding covers the western tip of the island of Montreal. It is pure suburb. About a month ago all the cities in my riding were told they could not drink the water for four days. Fortunately, everything was okay.
We found out that everything was fine. The municipal authorities reacted very well. I was very proud of Mayor Bill McMurchie of Pointe-Claire and other mayors in the community, including John Meaney. I will say that panic started to set in, in a suburban community on the island of Montreal.