Mr. Speaker, it seems that we will be ending the day together, or starting the night, I am not sure which one.
I am pleased to participate in this adjournment debate and I thank the parliamentary secretary for being with us at such a late hour, because I would finally like to have a meaningful discussion on behalf of all the pyrrhotite victims in Mauricie.
If there is one thing that I hope I have achieved in the three years of my mandate, it is to have raised parliamentarians' awareness of the tragedy of pyrrhotite in Trois-Rivières and more generally in Mauricie.
When I began working on this file, 800 families were affected by pyrrhotite. Today, more than 3,000 families are grappling with the problem of pyrrhotite in their homes—not to mention all the businesses, public buildings and infrastructure that are also affected by this scourge.
I do not want to hear the old “that is under provincial jurisdiction” response, so I will walk you through the chain of excuses to show how the federal government is responsible. Let us look at a very simple situation: a residential property owner is dealing with pyrrhotite. He decides to sue his contractor because he claims it is the contractor's fault. The contractor says that he built the house properly and according to the rules, just as he did with the foundation it was built on, but he did not make the concrete. He then tells the owner to sue the concrete maker. The concrete maker says that he poured a concrete foundation according to the rules but that he was not responsible for the aggregate or rock in the concrete. He tells the property owner that he should sue the quarry owner. The quarry owner says that the aggregate he sold complied with federal standards.
If this simple example does not illustrate how the federal government is directly responsible, I think there is a problem. Unfortunately the government has remained silent.
What is more, I think that providing support to our citizens during disasters is the responsibility of every level of government. In fact, I had the Library of Parliament do a study that looked at the largest Canadian disasters and the amount of money that was given by the federal government to the people affected by those disasters. You might be surprised to learn that pyrrhotite ranks second in terms of the magnitude of the disaster and its financial repercussions. It ranks first, however, in terms of the lack of government assistance, namely zero dollars.
As if that were not enough, we are told that this is a provincial responsibility, at a time when the Quebec National Assembly unanimously voted in favour of a motion, which I will not read for lack of time, calling on the federal government to become directly involved in this matter because it has a responsibility in terms of the Canadian standard in addition to its responsibility to help citizens.
I will repeat the questions for which we are awaiting a response. When will the government help the victims? When will the government change the standard to ensure that this problem does not occur in another region in Canada? Finally, when will the government appoint a credible spokesperson that the representatives of the Coalition Proprio-Béton can talk to?