Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise and speak to this issue. I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.
It is fascinating to be in the House talking about an update to outdated legislation to protect civilians and children from toxic “forever chemicals” and see the Conservatives wrapping themselves in defending plastics and toxic chemicals as somehow a vision for a better Canada. It really is peak Conservative.
I think of how far the Conservative Party is today from the Conservative Party back in the days when Brian Mulroney first brought the legislation through. He was a prime minister with whom I disagreed on many things, but he helped negotiate the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that literally saved the life of this planet.
The Conservatives today, if we were dealing with something like the ozone hole threat, would be lighting their hair on fire, the ones who have hair, and attacking this as some kind of disinformation and conspiracy theory. However, Brian Mulroney was able to work internationally on that.
He also pushed the treaty on acid rain, which was destroying the lakes across my region in northern Ontario. Under the new Conservative leader, he would be embracing acid rain, telling us it was the best thing that ever happened and that we had to support it.
When we are talking about a straightforward update for dealing with toxic chemicals—