Mr. Speaker, we should not be playing politics with the motion regarding a tragedy that took place in Walkerton when 2,300 people fell ill.
The actual report said the contributions to that tragedy were the Conservative cutbacks of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.
In stark contrast, in 2011 the Ontario environment minister, John Wilkinson, said the government is still paying heed to the lessons from the Walkerton tragedy. Wilkinson noted that Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberals had implemented 121 recommendations from Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor's 692-page report. Mr. Wilkinson said, “We didn't gut the resources that were there to protect people”, noting that the government has spent $30 million on the Walkerton Clean Water Centre and has trained more than 23,000 people.