John Bryden

[Supply, May 14th, 1998]

George would know. I do not know that many people in this Chamber would go back to the first world war. Certain members might, perhaps.

Nevertheless, this is a superb weapon, and I am very, very impressed. I was given the opportunity to fire the machine gun. It was quite amusing. It was more amusing to see the member for Burlington lying on the ground firing this machine gun because as you know, Mr. Speaker, the member for Burlington is noted for her charm and forthrightness. It was quite amusing to see her down in the trenches firing this machine gun. Fortunately, it had blanks in it and I felt quite safe as a result.

The important point about this is that this machine gun was highly portable and the amount of kickback was very minimal. We are looking at weapons that have been designed for the modern battlefield.

Coming back to my militia, it was very interesting because there they were, all dug in. Their weapons were in place. Later we moved down the road to look at the opposing forces. Along the road came the U.S. Marines and I have never seen anything like it. It was really amusing because these enormous young men with big shoulders were marching along. I could not help but laugh because in comparison to these youngsters serving the Canadian militia up on the hill awaiting the enemy, they were huge strapping professional soldiers.

I have to say that this C6 .25 calibre high power weapon is a great leveller. The reason they can use the lighter weight bullet is that it has the same ultimate impact of bullets twice as strong.

Maybe I am just showing my Canadian nationalism but in the end I would put more trust and more confidence in those youngsters from Hamilton who were manning those trenches. Provided that the Canadian government always remembers to equip its forces properly, we cannot go wrong in the kind of policy that we have toward our militia.

Turning to that, I will point out that in 1994 the defence committee came out with a white paper that suggested cutting back on the reserves.

It is very important to listen to what standing committees produce and what the MPs in this Chamber produce in recommendations to the government.

We can say with some satisfaction that the defence minister overrode some of those recommendations and had another report done. Rather than cut the reserve forces back to a total of 24,000, he in fact reinstituted a basic level of 30,000 for the primary reserve. In this year's estimates almost $1 billion is going into the support of Canada's reserve forces.

I should switch for a moment. I have another story with respect to our reserves.

Not very long ago, I think it was last year, the HMCS Shawinigan came into Hamilton harbour on a demonstration cruise. The then defence minister was there to tour the ship and I happened to be able to come along. Local dignitaries on the afterdeck were enjoying an occasional glass of wine and quite nice sandwiches. I had the opportunity to go along with the first officer and tour the Shawinigan from stem to stern.

It is like the C6 gun I was talking about. The Shawinigan is a superb little vessel. This is tomorrow's ship. Technically it is a minesweeper. It goes along on the ocean and it is supposed to spot mines, but in fact it maps the ocean floor. It has multiple defence capabilities. There is a container in the back of the vessel. At that time the container contained extra barracks. The Shawinigan is designed just like a container vessel. Any container containing any kind of weapon system on the Shawinigan can be transposed and it can be turned literally overnight into any kind of a support vessel.

The other thing that impressed me about the Shawinigan is that it is designed to be extremely mobile. The design of the ship's bow thrusters, which are not installed and I hope the defence minister will install them shortly, combined with the type of propulsion it has, the Shawinigan can actually turn on a dime. It can turn on its length. It should be able to turn on its length.

In today's world we have the problem of homing torpedoes. These are torpedoes which can be left on the sea floor and as soon as a vessel passes nearby, they can pursue the vessel and sink it. The Shawinigan has the capability of avoiding contact by one of those undersea missiles on very short notice. This is one of the reasons it is such an excellent support vessel, an excellent minesweeper.

I do not like to say this, with all due respect to the Minister of National Defence, but I actually like the forethought that has gone in to the Canadian built Shawinigan more than the forethought that is going in to the submarines that we are buying from Britain. I do want to say that I support the minister's decision to buy the submarines, but Canadian built is better. These vessels, like the Shawinigan , and there are four of them, are better than anything in any known navy.

What does that have to do with the reserves? The entire crew of the Shawinigan except for the chief officer are reservists. The reserves also have a naval reserve based in Quebec, for those who are interested in the regions of the country and how they play into our Canadian forces. We have about 5,000 reservists and they take their training and do their duty on these vessels.

It was most interesting to go around with the first officer. I am really sorry I do not remember where in the country he came from. He was most informative in showing me the various systems in place on the Shawinigan .

In terms of Canadian defence policy, preparing for the next millennium and preserving our nation, we have to stay ahead of the worldwide threat that will constantly develop against Canada. I am not talking about peacekeeping. I am talking about actual threats.

The difficulty is that Canada is one of the richest nations in the world. I am sorry to say that we have to protect that status and our sovereignty. We will always be the subject of a certain amount of hostility from other nations, not necessarily third world nations nor former iron curtain nations. There are other countries which sometimes have designs on Canada. That should make us want to preserve a very active and capable military response.

That is why the reserves are so important rather than a professional army which takes a long time to change. With great respect for our own professional army, professional armies are like military bureaucracies. When you join as a private or as a young officer and you stay in for 20 or 30 years, you are very much influenced by your first experiences. Your vision tends to be rooted very much in the past. An army with at least half of its response force made up of reserves has an advantage. It provides the opportunity to work with young people to create a modern army that is loyal to its new weaponry.

Meaford was an interesting experience. There was a change from armoured personnel carriers and tanks. The Persian gulf war showed us that this type of hardware is enormously vulnerable and is no longer an effective answer in a land war. We have actually turned back to the citizen soldier. This is another reason I like reservists. We are creating a Canadian forces based on the classic concept of the citizen army. It is just like republican Rome. When the state gets into trouble it has a cadre of relatively well trained personnel to call upon to answer the emergency.

While I do not pretend to be an expert on all the things the government has done in terms of national defence, I believe the minister is very much on track with his changes to the reserve forces. This is where we should make the investment. In tomorrow's wars, whether it is peacekeeping, whether it is local wars, or whether it is a national emergency, we need intelligent citizen soldiers who understand modern weaponry and modern tactics.

I would put my faith any day in those young militia members I saw at Meaford or on the Shawinigan rather than in the professional soldiers I saw from the United States or any other country either in NATO or out.

[Supply, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this debate. I think the role of the Canadian government, at least these past few years, in supporting the defence forces has been not brilliant but very good at the very least.

I would like to direct my remarks primarily toward the reserves because I am very interested in the whole issue of the reserves. My riding is Wentworth—Burlington, but close to my riding in Hamilton there are two major reserve battalions of great historic fame, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.

Just two weeks ago the member for Burlington and I went on a training exercise with the Argyles at Meaford, the militia support training centre opened in 1995 near the little town of Meaford in the Bruce Peninsula. Note the date, 1995. This is obviously an initiative of this government, not the previous government.

This militia training support base is a part of a series that is to be opened across the country. There is already one that has been opened at Valcartier in Quebec. There is another one to be opened in the west at Waineright ad there are two to be opened at Gagetown and Aldershot in the maritimes.

The theme of these proving grounds is to give Canada's reserve forces an opportunity to train in near combat circumstances. Meaford is a section of ground that was set aside during the second world war for the training of our troops for overseas. It went more or less into mothballs for many years. It was opened 1995 primarily for the use of the militia but also permanent force people train there as well.

It was very interesting. The member for Burlington and I arrived about noon and we were taken on to the proving grounds. There are some very excellent and modern support buildings, barracks for permanent forces primarily but also for militia forces. The area is very large, comprising of a lake, a section of the Niagara escarpment, a lot of brush and mixed countryside. In one section of the proving grounds there is an artillery range.

While we were there we saw artillery being fired. They use live rounds because they want to test the quality of the ammunition.

More important, we went down to where the Argyles were dug in. There were dug in to some terrain facing the mock enemy. The mock enemy were not all that mock. They were U.S. marines from Buffalo who were testing out the Meaford proving grounds. They were the supposed enemy approaching the Canadian militia across about two kilometres of open ground.

It was very interesting. The youngsters who were in the foxholes dug on the side of the hill were men and women who had been recruited from primarily the city of Hamilton and the surrounding area. There they were in foxholes with their primary support weapon, the C6, and a machine gun derived from that in their positions. They were staring across the countryside at the opposing forces that were supposed to be coming.

It was very interesting for me. I have done some research in the past on the military. One of the great dangers of peacetime military is that it might get engaged in buying toys or buying hardware that has political value but little real value in the event of combat.

As a military historian, I was most interested to see that these young militia members in their foxholes were armed with something called a C6, an automatic fire weapon that fires bullets of about .25 in calibre. It is actually measured in millimetres but I can never get the metric straight. It is half the weight of the bullet that would be carried in a normal AK47 or M30 or whatever it is the Americans use.

This weapon was totally without class. In other words, I cannot imagine gun dealers across the world wanting to acquire this weapon. It is manufactured in Canada. We started manufacturing it in Canada for Canadian forces only four or five years ago.

It is a superlative firearm. The average soldier can carry twice the amount of ammunition as an opposing soldier carrying one of the more traditional firearms that we would expect in Russian made weapons and certainly NATO made weapons.

We can see that someone in Canadian forces hierarchy is thinking very carefully and is considering the fact that when there are Canadian forces in the field, they want to minimize the weight and maximize the amount of munitions they actually carry.

This was a superb gun as well in the sense that the militia members demonstrated to me and explained that it was a gun that fires dirty. In other words there is not a lot of maintenance. It is extremely reliable.

I thought to myself that there is a lot of intelligence going on somewhere in the Canadian forces brass, in its hierarchy, to come up with a specific firearm for use by the Canadian forces and which is unique to the Canadian forces.

Provided that we do not have a repeat of the catastrophe that occurred in the first world war with the Ross rifle. I do not know whether many people around here remember Canada's first foray into producing its own—

[Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to rise to speak to this motion which I do not support. I wish to explain in some detail why I do not support it.

Some years ago I was in Washington to do some research in the archives. I found the archives were closed, that it was a public holiday and quite an unexpected public holiday. It turned out that it was Memorial Day.

I had nothing to do because I could not work so I walked down into the mall area. I found myself next to the Vietnam memorial. It was the first time I had ever seen the Vietnam memorial. As I said, it was on Memorial Day so quite a few veterans were standing around the memorial.

It has to be imagined. The monument to the Vietnam war in the United States is probably one of the most moving monuments built anywhere in the world. It is quite remarkable. It consists of a huge slab of black marble. A ramp goes down one end and up the other, and on it are engraved all the names of the people who died during the Vietnam war.

Many of the veterans were middle aged since the Vietnam war occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many people of my age were standing around the Vietnam memorial to pay homage to their fallen comrades. It was very moving. I was surprised to see little Canadian flags everywhere from one end of the memorial to the other. It was quite a shocking contrast to see the Canadian flags against the black.

I did not realize that Canadians had served in the Vietnam war. I was very surprised to find that out. I talked to some of the veterans there at the time who explained that they knew Canadians who fought with them in the rice paddies in Vietnam, Canadians who served with great courage. Some were killed and some were injured. Many of them believed in the cause the Americans were fighting for in Vietnam.

On further inquiry I found out that approximately 10,000 Canadians fought with the Americans in Vietnam. There was such a surge of support for the war among young people in Canada that the Americans set up a special recruitment system whereby Canadians could cross the border to get a letter of acceptance and then go back across the border to join up and serve in the forces.

Many Canadians who served in Vietnam did so because they thought they were fighting against communism. They believed that communism as we saw it in North Korea was a terrible force in the world and they wanted to save the world from it. True idealism brought those Canadians to actually risk their lives in that foreign war.

Canada does not recognize veterans who served in foreign armies. We can see the wisdom of that decision when we consider Vietnam. Those young Canadians who went over there to serve in the American forces in Vietnam believed they were doing the right thing. We now know subsequently that the war in Vietnam was not really a war of the United States fighting to save the free world and sparing it from communism. It was really the United States intervening in a civil war that involved a struggle for independence.

The Vietnamese had been under the heel, literally speaking, of the French, the Vichy French and even the Japanese during the second world war and post second world war. The Vietnamese are very proud people and were very determined to gain their independence.

The war in Vietnam, as we know, led to some very terrible atrocities. I think of My Lai in which Canadian soldiers were distressed by the fact that they could not see the enemy among the civilians so they killed the civilians. The Vietnam war was also a war in which the Americans resorted to chemical warfare in the form of defoliants and agent orange.

I think we would agree that Canada is probably very glad that it did not officially sanction the Canadians fighting in Vietnam because in fact despite their very best intentions they were fighting for a losing cause and a wrong cause. That is the most important issue.

This is one of the dangers when Canadians fight for other countries. They may indeed take up a cause that later is discovered to be a cause that Canada would not want to associate itself with.

The Vietnam war was from 1967 to 1973, the major portion of the war. If we flip back another 30 years we come to 1937 and the Spanish civil war. That war involved the forces of General Franco representing the state and backed by the fascists, backed by Germany and Mussolini but mainly by Nazi Germany, and the republican forces which were backed by the communist power of the day, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was instrumental in getting that war rolling because it had a philosophy until recent years of spreading international communism. The Soviet Union made a direct effort to keep the civil war going in Spain.

Part of the Soviet Union's campaign to support the republican side involved the formation of international brigades. These brigades comprised battalions and volunteers who were recruited from all over the world. One of those battalions was the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

Approximately 1,300 Canadians went over and joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and fought on the side of the republicans during the Spanish civil war. The Spanish civil war was a terrible war. It was a brutal war. Men, women and children were killed. It was a war that is echoed by the civil war that is now occurring in Algeria.

It was a different world in 1937. As the young men from Canada went over to serve in the republican forces they could not see inside the Soviet Union. They only knew the Soviet Union as a country that was supporting workers and they thought it was a grand new experiment. They thought it was going to free the people, and so with the greatest good spirit they went over to serve in the republican forces.

One of the most famous persons at that time was Norman Bethune who served in the Spanish civil war, not in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion but by giving medical aid to the republican troops.

We now know in retrospect that far from fighting for democracy, as the member from Kamloops said, they were fighting on the side of the republicans who were supported by the worst dictatorship in the world. The dictator was Stalin. After the war we discovered that this was a communist rule, a dictatorship that would kill millions of people, millions of people in Ukraine and millions of its own people, the Russians.

We have to remember that Norman Bethune went on to China, served in the Chinese forces and became famous there. However China became a dictatorship under Mao and it was one of the cruelest dictatorships in modern time. These people killed millions and they were every bit as bad as Hitler.

We have the dilemma that these people in good spirit and good heart went over to support a cause that Canada and all the world in retrospect realize was actually supporting a cause that was perfectly reprehensible and we would not want to have Canada associated with it.

We have the dilemma that the member for Kamloops wants to acknowledge the courage and contribution to history, the contribution in spirit of the members of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion 60 years ago. He is right in his intention but wrong in the execution.

Canada can never take the chance of supporting foreign wars in which the outcome or result may indicate a political entity that is completely unacceptable to Canada.

I will conclude by making a suggestion to the member for Kamloops. In the United States the Canadian Vietnam veterans are recognized and compensated by the United States because of their service in the Vietnam war. I suggest very strongly to the member that he make representations to the Embassy of Spain to see if he can get Spain to make a similar recognition of the members of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and to get compensation from where it really ought to come and that is Spain.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is simply between a mishap due to negligence or a mishap due to an act of God if you will. If negligence can be proven prior to 1986 there is no doubt that compensation is in order.

I submit to the hon. member that what we want to avoid is the type of situation which occurs in the United States where people sue a doctor or a hospital regardless of negligence. As soon as the mishap occurs a lawsuit occurs. We do not want that to happen in our system. After all, our system cannot be risk free. If we go to the hospital for any cure, we are going to run a certain amount of risk.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member was concerned that my reply was so excellent that she felt she had to interrupt it because she did not have a rebuttal.

There is considerable debate about whether an agency can be held as committing a mishap or having been negligent if a process appears in the medical community at a certain time and that agency does not implement it until other countries got involved.

There is no doubt that after 1986 we should have done it. Before 1986 there is a doubt and if it is deemed by the appropriate authorities that a mishap has occurred before 1986, I think compensation is 100% in order.

What about after 1990 as raised by the interim leader of the Conservative Party? Is she proposing that because there is no mishap after 1990 there should be no cash payout for any of those who acquired hepatitis C after 1990 and 30% of those who received the blood transfusions and were exposed to hepatitis C did acquire it?

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member obviously agrees entirely with the letter and my comments because she concurs that this is an issue of mishap. If a mishap is deemed to have occurred even prior to 1986 then compensation is in order. However, there is considerable debate, as we see from the letter writer, whether an agency—

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak after the interim leader of the Conservative party. My remarks will address some of the concerns she raised.

I read a letter that appeared in the Globe and Mail last Saturday which is relevant to this debate. The headline is “Why the hepatitis C decision is correct”:

Those who continue to argue for financial compensation for those who acquired hepatitis C through blood transfusions prior to 1986 are advocating government compensation for what was at that time a known but unpreventable risk. This is without precedent and could lead to endless requests for compensation from individuals who have experienced a wide variety of adverse effects of medical treatments for which there were no risk free alternatives.

The fact is that prior to 1986, the risk of post-transfusion non-A, non-B hepatitis was well established, but there was no way to reduce that risk.

Screening for hepatitis B had been in place since the early 1970s, but post-transfusion hepatitis continued to occur. This entity was called non-A, non-B hepatitis until 1989 when hepatitis C was first described.

This part of the letter is especially important:

In 1986 the United States and some European countries introduced surrogate testing of donated blood, whereby blood was tested for antibody to hepatitis B core antigen. Donated blood with the presence of antibody to hepatitis B core antigen was not used. We now know that the use of surrogate tests would have prevented 70 per cent of cases of transfusional hepatitis C. It is for this reason that the federal and provincial governments are offering financial compensation for those infected from blood products between 1986 and 1990.

We must not loose site of the fact that blood transfusion is often a life saving treatment and that many of those who acquired hepatitis C from transfusions prior to 1986 are alive today only because they received this blood. Furthermore, the majority of individuals with chronic hepatitis C are asymptomatic and over two-thirds will never develop serious liver disease.

Public policy must be based on sound underlying principles. Compensation for preventable harm is a given, but financial compensation from the public purse for a known but unpreventable complication of medical treatment for one particular illness sets a dangerous precedent.

We must not allow our genuine concern for those who acquired hepatitis C from blood transfusions to obscure rational public policy.

This letter was signed by Stephen D. Shafran, MD, division of infectious diseases, department of medicine, University of Alberta.

There are a number of things that deserve our attention in this letter, not the least of them being that Dr. Shafran points out that between 1986 and 1990 there was good reason why the government should be held accountable. It did not apply a screening process that was in use in the United States and in Europe. After 1990 obviously it applied it.

It is very interesting that the Leader of the Opposition today starts talking in question period about compensating for negligence. Until now the debate has been about compensating all victims regardless of government negligence, all victims who got hepatitis C from the blood supply regardless of whether the screening test was in place or whether it could have been in place.

I think we are all quite agreed that compensation would be proper as long as there is recognized liability on the part of the government. If that recognized liability goes back to 1981 and it is agreed that it should go back to 1981 then it would be appropriate to compensate those people.

However, I suggest that regardless of the meeting that is going to occur a little later this week it may be very difficult to argue that blood supply officials were negligent if they did not introduce a screening process not in use in the United States or in Europe until 1986.

In other words, there is the dilemma. Is a medical agency negligent if it does not introduce a test as soon as it is available anywhere in the world? I suggest there may be a problem there.

The interim leader of the Conservative Party expressed concern about the people who acquired hepatitis C after 1990. As she can see from this letter clearly, even with the test in place, it was not 100% successful. Thirty per cent of the people who took blood products from the blood supply system, even after the test was in place, acquired hepatitis C.

There was a risk that existed and that risk was not as a result of negligence on the part of any government official. The question then becomes is it then good public policy to award a cash payout. It is not compensation if there is no negligence. Is it good public policy to award a cash payout to anyone who gets sick as a result of some form of medical treatment?

A very dangerous precedent is in the process of being set if we decide to compensate those after 1990. I note that the Leader of the Opposition did not suggest that. He has changed his tune.

He has recognized that negligence is the only justifiable reason for compensation. He has avoided the whole issue of post-1990 sufferers of hepatitis C.

If we give money to people who become injured as a result of an unpreventable risk in the health system, where will it end? Hospitals now have the occurrence of super bugs. Despite every effort on the part of hospitals, occasionally patients come into the hospital and get sick by infections that are basically hard to detect and difficult to control.

What if a surgeon who is expert in his field, who is extremely competent and who has all the support imaginable, slips and a person gets injured, sick or even dies as a result of a non-negligence occurrence in the hospital?

We are in danger of setting a very dangerous precedent. The letter I read is from a person who is not a politician but an expert in the field of medicine and certainly should be accepted for knowing what he is talking about.

[Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, May 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to the motion. While I believe the intentions behind the motion are excellent, the motion is seriously flawed.

If I may say to the member, what I find most wrong with the motion is that it sets the individual against the group. What he would propose to do with the motion is amend the charter to the effect that parents would have certain rights over their children.

The very essence of rights legislation is to define the limitations of the state or the group on actions of the individual. If we give rights to parents or the state it does not matter; we erode the rights of the individual. We would get into terrible difficulties if we accorded special rights to parents. We would get parents who might abuse their children in a very profound way and we would limit the ability of the state to intervene.

On the other hand the member detects, as we all detect from our constituents, an erosion of the ability of custodial parents to manage their children in a sincere and effective way because of a certain fear that the state may intervene improperly when it attempts to apply discipline or other actions on children.

This is not a problem that is limited to parents. It is also a problem that extends to other custodial figures in society like teachers and police officers in the course of their duties in a community with teenagers and other young people. In the old days before the charter of rights, the teacher, parent or the local policeman could caution a child, could say to that child “you must not do this”. They could even enforce limited discipline.

The real flaw in the charter of rights, which is causing the problem and discomfort with respect to the ability of parents, teachers or local police officers to discipline children, is that the charter accorded full civil rights to children before the age of majority, before the age of having the responsibility to exercise those rights.

We have a situation now where if a teacher attempts to impose discipline on a child in school, or even if a parent attempts to impose discipline on a child, the child can resort to the courts and actually report to the police. We have a situation in our schools now where there is a great problem with respect to teacher-student discipline simply because children are often a little too alert to their rights, which has caused a major problem in the exercise of discipline.

I feel the problem in the charter of rights is fundamental to our difficulties with the Young Offenders Act. Whatever amendments come down in the Young Offenders Act, ultimately we will have to amend the charter of rights so that we can give not full civil rights to young people but return some of the custodial opportunities to parents, teachers and the courts.

While I support in principle the idea behind the motion, I regret I cannot support the motion itself.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks which were very helpful.

Is this not a situation that follows on from what was said by members opposite in the Bloc Quebecois? Is the environment not a situation where we do great disservice and put Canadians at risk if we leave it to the municipalities and the provinces to pass the appropriate legislation and provide the appropriate scrutiny to avoid disastrous fires like the one that occurred at Plastimet in Hamilton? Is this not a situation where the national government has to bring in strong legislation with strong penalties to make sure that this kind of abuse of the environment does not occur, as was the case with the Plastimet fire in Hamilton?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate the member's remarks.

Earlier on in an intervention I mentioned that in Hamilton, which is near my riding, there was a disastrous fire in a recycling plant which spilled tonnes upon tonnes of toxic smoke into the air. It caused a great deal of damage to the soil and the neighbouring area. Indeed, there is great contention between the various levels of the government, the municipality and the province, about who is responsible and who should take the blame for this disastrous fire.

I would like to ask the member his opinion on a situation like this. Is this not really an example where a national government, for the benefit of all Canadians, should take matters of the environment as a matter of first priority? In fact, is the protection of the environment not a national issue which should be backed up by very strong legislation and by adequate penalties that override any provincial jurisdiction that fails to fulfil its mandate to look after the environment?

Should we not as a national government get tough with those organizations that deliberately take advantage of lax provincial laws and put the environment at risk? Should we not get after these people?