Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and thank all parties, my colleagues from the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Progressive Conservative Party who have spoken in favour of this motion. I want to touch on a couple of points that I think are important.
We are talking about is creating a process, or a trigger, for the general public and also the scientific community, the industrial community, that will to lead to some results for people across this land.
We have a situation right now in Windsor and in Sydney, with its tar ponds. We have seen the pollution and the environment degraded to the point that it affects the health of people.
Last week Windsor received the distinguished achievement of having the most haze. Haze affects the air quality that people breathe and that affects them. It is not just an individual thing. It is a societal thing. It costs our province and our country billions of dollars in loss of wages, loss of health, and it shortens our lifespan.
We are asking for is a sense of responsibility. We are asking the federal government to take a leadership role in this by investigating and providing support. We ask that it consult with the community and bring awareness. Then the area would have the knowledge needed to participate in discussions of what to do next. That leadership is missing. The partners have to be brought to the table. Then we can bring the problems to the chamber so we can discuss possible solutions.
It is not about banning something outright. It is not about stopping something. It is about providing people with an educated ability to make decisions. We have to make decisions about the pollutants in the environment and the affect they have on people, the shortening of lifespan and disease. We have to discuss whether it is worth it to continue producing these or whether it is worth the wealth being accumulating. All we ask is that people have a chance to debate the issues.
There are plenty of things people can do. There is remedial action. Take a look at the Great Lakes. For decades we have looked at the neglect. We have continued not to invest in simple things that could improve our quality of life and could have an economic benefit.
At present, the city of Detroit is the largest polluter of the Detroit River. On the Canadian side of the river we have similar problems. We know there are problems with the reproductive systems of citizens in our community. We have high rates of children born without brains. We have high rates of lung cancer and respiratory diseases. We need the opportunity to get the resources to address these problems. This is what we are calling for here.
We are not talking about an outright banning of any particular perfume, chemical, object or product. We are asking for is public debate. We also want choice, so we can invest in solutions. The solutions can be achieved.
Another example is the Edison power plant which is across the river from Windsor. There is a pile of coal that simply sits at the plant and the wind blows that coal into the Detroit River. We then drink the water from the river after it is treated. There are simple solutions to stop that. We must discuss ways in which we can make change.
The motion does not come only from myself. The motion comes from a movement in Windsor to create a centre for environmental health. The centre would be a body that would work with everyone to raise the information and the knowledge, then it would come back to the community so we could discuss and decide what to do about the problem. If we do not have the mechanisms in place, we are subjected to continual health and environmental problems.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has identified that environmental contaminants costs billions of dollars across the globe. The OECD is looking at action plans to deal with this. It knows that we have to change our ways, not just for health reasons but for economic reasons.
In Ontario we lose billions of dollars of production because of smog. These things can change. We need to have the leadership.
