Mr. Speaker, I would suggest the Liberals could put our hon. colleague on the road as exhibit A of the problem with the Conservative viewpoint. I remember when the Conservatives used to get up and say there was no such thing as climate change, that it was dinosaur flatulence that caused this. Now what we are hearing is that he has a wetland in his riding so what else do we need to do.
I will say that I have a wetland right behind me, and 100 years later there are still lots of birds but we cannot fish in there because it is poisoned with cyanide and arsenic, because the mining industry at the time thought the easiest way was just to dump. If we had asked them to fix up the environment back then, they would have all screamed that they would all be out of business.
All our northern lakes were destroyed by Inco. What did Inco do? It was not voluntary. Inco managers never fixed it up because they thought it was good to help. No, the capitalist economy was legislated to change it. Guess what happened? They became more efficient and they are making lots of money.
There is the idea that somehow if we ever force industry to do anything it is an absolute threat, when in fact industries have gotten away decade after decade with polluting the atmosphere and not paying. This comes from a region full of resource communities that know. Our communities have lived with that environmental impact, so we are not flat-earthers like my hon. colleague. We actually believe that legislation is needed to make these guys live up to their obligations.