Joe Volpe

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, February 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my hon. colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel for his comment. In the spirit of friendship we are seeing today, with ministers complimenting members of the official opposition, I would like to follow suit and compliment my hon. colleague, who has been sitting at the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities for many years. He does an outstanding and commendable job. I know that he will appreciate my comment as well. I am one of those generals who never fight a battle that has already been fought.

Regarding the environment and the platform in the last election, we always agree on the principles that should guide the policy of this party, and perhaps that of the government. I have never changed my mind, and I see no reason to do so today.

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, February 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to answer that with a straight face. I thank him for his observations, especially in my own personal regard. Let it not be said that we are excessively humble.

The minister has taken great pains to recite a series of very general initiatives that are resident in the area by the governments in each of the three territories.

I might have said the same thing. In fact, the reason that I could is, as he pointed out in his speech, that the government, which proceeded his, actually began all of this activity, a lot of it in mining and in petroleum extraction, but a lot of it also in construction. We have some of the finest airports and airport runways in the north capable of handling some very heavy duty haulage.

All of that is activity that preceded Bill C-3. What I am asking the minister, which I know he will not be able to answer because his time is up, and to repeat what I said a few minutes ago, is to have a how to plan. We want the specifics, the resources that had to be associated with this bill, in order to give those of us on this side of the House the comfort level that the objectives enunciated in the four pillars are actually ones that, number one, are workable, but, number two, to which we can also put a timeline on the full-time equivalent jobs over a long period of time. However, that has not happened.

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, February 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my questioning just a moment ago, and I now want to reiterate, on balance this does not look like legislation that we would have any difficulty in at least studying further at committee and perhaps supporting.

Why would I say that? I do not think there is a Canadian in the country who would not agree that we should extend our sovereignty over waters that we have traditionally considered to be our own. As the minister says, these are part of waters that we have thought to be our internal waters. They are part of the Arctic Archipelago and therefore they are Canadian territory.

As for the part that goes beyond that, and think about this for a moment, we are, with a stroke of the pen, reasserting what we have already agreed with all our partners in the United Nations, and that is this is our territory, it is our right to extend our jurisdiction to the full 200 kilometres. That is great. We want to do that. It is good for us. We expect that as part of Canadian sovereignty we would give notice to the entire world that these waters are now our waters.

Just so you know, Mr. Speaker, because I know you come from that province, this is equal to the entire land mass of Saskatchewan that we are, with this bill, advertising to the world is now territory water, aquatic territory, over which the Canadian government, the state of Canada, will now exercise its jurisdiction.

I know members have read the bill in great detail. It is about 10 lines long, yet it generated from the minister a speech of about 15 minutes. My compliments to him. I listened through it all, hoping to hear something more than “looking at”. I think the minister, perhaps to his credit but certainly to the advantage of his party, indicated that the government was looking at a whole stream of things that would be made possible with the passage of the legislation.

We would be delighted to help him along. In the process, however, we would want to ask a few questions. He talked about four pillars upon which the legislation would be based. I was looking, for example, at the mechanisms, the processes, the moneys, the resources that he and the government would be putting in place in order to, first, effectively exercise the jurisdiction which we are claiming as is our right under the Conventions of the UN over this entire territory.

For example, how many more ships are we prepared to buy, to lease, to engage in protecting the territory that, as I said a moment ago, is the size of the province of Saskatchewan, which is bigger than almost every other country in the world, save maybe the top 10?

If we are not to have more ships in aquatic territory, how does the minister expect Canadians to feel assured that they will exercise greater sovereignty over this great expanse of further territory? It is not that Canadians do not want to, because we do. We have already established that we feel it is our right, it is part of our territory, and we do want to protect it. We want to exercise sovereignty over it.

We want to, as well, as the minister suggested, ensure that there is greater security. For that, aside from the satellite beams that we will be engaging to help us track where ships might be, because I think we are talking about ships in aquatic territory, we are not really talking about tanks, we are not talking about land rovers, we are not talking about boots on the ground, as he mentioned, we are also talking about ocean-going vessels, whether they are below surface or above surface. However, there is no indication that resources will be put at the disposal of the Canadian government and its enforcement agencies to ensure they can do the job that the bill would have them do. Otherwise it is meaningless.

To say that we are now extending our sovereignty over additional waters, the equivalent size of Saskatchewan, without being able to put resources to effect that sovereignty is empty rhetoric. It is a looking at rather than doing.

In my question for the minister, who is courteous enough to listen to debate in the House, I mentioned a second thing I was looking for, and perhaps he might want to address this.

We must remember that we are extending sovereignty over an aquatic territory. If this is going to be an economic development exercise in economic development, we are not only going to claim our sovereignty over this vast expanse of water, but we are going to take claim an authority over whatever is underneath the ocean bed.

The minister has suggested that an additional 33% of all the natural gas deposits in the northern part of the western hemisphere are resident in this area. I guess some of the science has speculated that is where it would be. The minister has made a similar observation about light crude and its availability for the energy requirements of tomorrow. I want to accept this.

That is all the more reason why I ask this. Where are the resources in the bill to ensure that Canadian businesses and Canadian residents in the three Arctic territories and beyond have the right of first development of those natural resources? Where is the plan? Can we look at, speculate and plan? Yes, we can do all of these three things, but where is the plan? Where is the how to that tells us that we would, through the bill, be engaging in the development of the future interests of Canadians not only in the north, but everywhere? I do not see that. I do not see the resources.

It is a bit disconcerting because here we are in the midst of a debate about the budget implementation bill. I know Bill C-3 is not a part of that, but we are still seized in the House with ensuring that the budget implementation bill and all of the tens of billions of dollars that this Parliament would authorize the government to expend for the purpose of stimulating the Canadian economy and for developing the future assets of Canada's potential resources are spent. There is not a penny, not a dollar, not an indication of a specific agenda item.

There is though, if I might digress, some value in rhetoric, but there is a lot of rhetoric. I am not sure rhetoric is going to buy the credibility that Canadians so desperately want when it comes to engaging in particular actions.

A third pillar the minister says is an environmental one. The environment that he has talked about up until this point has to do with ocean-going vessels polluting the waters they traverse. By that pollution, I am not sure if he is talking about greenhouse gas-type emissions. I suspect he is talking in greater detail about hard pollution that goes from the ship into the water and affects the marine life and anybody who is dependent on that marine life. The minister has talked about that at great length and he has talked about how we will protect that.

Canadians, or at least the ones who had the good fortune to exercise their vote for me, did not see from the government in the last Parliament any substantive action on pollution abatement, on pollution restriction, or on going after polluters in our backyard.

Will we now believe the Conservatives when they say that they will get those people who pollute waters, which are about the size of the entire province of Saskatchewan, but that they will not spend a dime to do it? They will stand in the House of Commons on Bill C-3 when everybody is watching them. Because they say that they will do that and because they say that the environment is one of the concerns they will try to address with Bill C-3, everybody will believe them and will back off. I find that difficult to believe.

One reason why I find it difficult to believe is that even the casual reader will know that over the course of the last summer and fall, various other countries have taken a special interest in the Arctic waters, waters which we claim as our own. In fact, we have always said they have been our own. However, they extend to countries like Norway, Russia, Denmark, Greenland and the United States. They all have competing claims, competing interests and overlapping concerns about the environment and about pollution. The environment and pollution appear to be the umbrella under which everybody operates when they want to talk about interests and development.

I have not seen anything anywhere in the bill that says that we have engaged any of those countries in any bilateral discussions about how we will enforce our sovereignty, especially with respect to environmental and pollution type issues in the Arctic and in these waters in particular. I do not see that anywhere and there has not been any indication that the government has actually engaged in those kinds of discussions. Not only that, there is no indication that the government has raised these in the United Nations forum.

I understand the Prime Minister is at the United Nations today. During question period, one of my colleagues asked the government side a question about an agenda. In response none of those items were on that agenda, but it was asked during question period, not during answer period. Perhaps the minister would care to elaborate on specifically which items related to the bill and, more specific, to the environment and pollution will be raised by the Prime Minister with counterparts in the United Nations so we can get the compliance of the countries that have a more immediate interest in the geography in question under the legislation.

If we do not have a forum in which to raise these issues with a receptive series of countries, and it is important that they be receptive, then we go back to one of my very first items of concern, which is: where are the resources to ensure that we have the military capacity to protect the sovereignty that we claim with the bill?

Are we spending more money in defence? Are we buying more vessels? I heard only one for Coast Guard increased capacity. One Coast Guard vessel, or turning it to a land example for our purposes, would be about three 18 wheelers, maybe four. If we dropped four 18 wheelers, one after the other, in the middle of Saskatchewan, who would notice? Not very many. It would take a while for those four 18 wheelers, one right behind the other, to patrol a territory the size of Saskatchewan.

We do not even have an indication that is what we will do. In a time when we are asking jurisdictions to spend tens of billions of dollars, along comes legislation that says the government will take care of this. It will be its territory. It will take care of the environment, catch all polluters and develop the economy in the area.

We could probably build infrastructures for three months of the year, so it would take a substantial amount of time to do infrastructure that might, in other places, take three or four years. However, there is no indication of resources. How seriously can we take the government on this?

We hear the usual story about trying to help people locally. Yes, we want to help people locally and we want to give them greater authority over all of this but we need to remember that this is a bill about aquatic territory. The minister explained how this would do great things for people in the north, especially in those areas where they are resident about 1,000 kilometres from the shore. We, too, have great interest in ensuring that the economies and the sovereignty of people indigenous to the area are protected and enhanced.

However, we do not want to blow smoke in their eyes when we are talking about something else. We would like to have a bit of direct honesty about what it is we are going to do with them specifically that will enhance their sovereignty, give them greater autonomy and make them full partners in the development of that economic exercise that he says is one of the four pillars of this particular bill.

He says that Bill C-3 would give us control over those commercial shipping lanes, not that they are already available. They do not go through 12 months of the year. The depth of the ice is still such that it prevents that from happening. However, has the government given us an indication of how many ships use these shipping lanes? How will we monitor them?

For example, members may recall just recently the great activity by pirates just off the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is in the papers every day. The first thing that all countries, which have merchant marines operating in the area, tell us is that the ocean is so vast that it is impossible for anybody to monitor or keep track of all these pirates. In Canada we would say polluters because that is what the minister focused his attention on.

Where are the resources to ensure that an aquatic territory that is vastly larger than the seas off Somalia and Saudi Arabia will be any safer for all of us? He said that we need to protect the security of Canadians from terrorists and from criminal organizations. Does he have an indication of which ones? Has he given us an indication of how much of that activity is currently going on and what means we need to engage in order to put an end to it?

I am shocked. If the minister could indicate to us that all of this is actually taking place, why have we not done anything so far? Is a piece of legislation that is some eight lines long, which gives us the authority to exercise jurisdiction that is already ours by UN convention, going to solve that problem? I would think not.

I would think that the minister would probably say that we need to do this, that we need to expend this amount of money, these hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, to ensure that Canadian sovereignty is firmly established, that security for all Canadians is protected in this area, and he would show us how. He would show us the vessels that we would engage, the satellites in which we would invest and the additional marines, RCMP or soldiers that we would engage in the area. He would show us the plan that is already in place to develop the economy with the hope that it will produce X number of jobs and X number of activities that will generate the economy in the area.

After all, the object of the day, in passing the action plan in this House, is to ensure that the tens of billions of dollars that Canadians are willing to invest go for the benefit of Canadians, not just today but down the road, and that they do it in an environment that gives them security and addresses the concerns for the environment and pollution, which are also very much on everyone's minds, and finally, that they provide the indigenous populations that are resident in the territories adjacent to this vast aquatic area with the future that we want them to take for granted.

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, February 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, let me compliment the minister in making his case. I do not know whether it is completely made, but I do not think he is going to find many people disagreeing with the extension of Canadian sovereignty over its own territory and over its own waters.

I noted that he took special pains to explain in his presentation and again in answers to my colleague from the Bloc that a focus of his would be not only environmental, but essentially economic and developmental in nature.

Given the areas under question and the difficulties in accessing them, is he already preparing an agenda for building infrastructure in order to extract the natural gas and the light crude that he and others expect would be there?

Has he already developed a plan with interested capitalists who would be prepared to engage in a partnership with the government in developing these potentials?

I focused only on natural gas and light crude because those are the ones that he took particular delight in bringing forward, especially in the context of his former portfolio as environment minister.

[Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, February 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose we disagree. When we are talking about a principle, we are talking about the transfer of the principle, we are not talking about the technology associated with validating the principle. I think it works the other way around.

Technology may support the principle, as opposed to building a principle on the basis of the application of technology. I think he is wrong and I am sure that, as the debate proceeds, he will find that the error of his ways will be corrected by very enthusiastic members in the House.

[Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, February 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would not want the member from the NDP to confuse the fact that I am willing to cooperate for the benefit of Canadians at large with any kind of approval of any of the plans that he ascribes to the Conservative Party. Far be it from that.

As well, he will have to accept that I disagree with his definition of harmonization and his inferences that come from his own definition of harmonization.

I would not want to get into a discussion on the floor of the House right now because we probably will not have as much time for the debate as he would like, but the question about whether the executive branches of two governments can have discussions that go outside of Parliament prior to any legislation that is presented in Parliament is a notion perhaps for political scientists to debate, and he might refer to them. However, as far as I am concerned, the security of Canadians always trumps virtually everything else.

In my own province. we had at one time a very heated debate about whether we would have surveillance cameras at stop signs and red lights, but that debate, while it seemed to be raging intensely for a while, has now turned into one where everybody has accepted the presence of security video cameras. Now, virtually every parking lot, every taxi, every elevator and every store has one. I am wondering whether the hon. member thinks that is an intrusion of privacy or whether that is an enhancement in security.

[Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, February 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank my hon. colleague. Someone told me a few hours ago that I agree with my Bloc colleague so often that I could become an advocate for provincial interests. Perhaps I should move to Quebec and become a Bloc Québécois member? No, never.

The member points out that problems exist across Canada. There are no problems in my riding, but Highway 401 may have some problems. This bill would therefore ensure greater safety for the people who live near that highway.

[Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, February 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have several observations. Without jest, the member's compliments in my personal regard are doing me great damage because most people think of me as a capital L Liberal. I think he is probably wishing that I were a small c conservative but I am too close to the individual beside me, who is wearing a bright red tie, to even suggest that I would, in a moment of blushing, ever turn blue.

The member did say one thing that is really important and it is a compliment that I will accept on behalf of all parliamentarians. He said that parliamentarians in committee can actually work toward a very positive end. He made allusions to the fact that the committee on transport dealt with those issues related to rail safety, and they are very much a part of this legislation.

He may be right that the Liberal government that preceded his put all the good ideas on the table that everybody who has the public interest in mind should have co-operated and effected, but that Liberal government of that day was not gifted with the same kind of opposition as the current government. In other words, the current government has an official opposition that is working toward the public interest rather than partisan interests. I hope we will continue to work for the public interest.

[Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, February 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to engage in this debate, especially after the parliamentary secretary. We always have an opportunity to correct the record after he speaks because he engages us in a historical perspective on events usually laced with a bit of partisanship, even though we are dealing with a very serious topic.

I enjoy the opportunity simply because there is always a chance to re-address and clarify exactly what is happening with some of the legislation.

This bill was born out of an initiative, since the hon. parliamentary secretary mentioned this a moment ago, of a government of which I was a part. It is the Liberal government that he wishes to emulate so assiduously. First, in 1992, when that Liberal government was in opposition, it prompted amendments to the Transportation Act. Second, the Liberal government initiated a series of studies in 2002 and consultations in 2004 in order to lead to legislation that we have before us today.

Although I am a little too kind to repeat it in its original form, one might say that the Conservative government has waited far too long to present the bill, even though it had in its disposition prior studies and work and energies contributed to the satisfaction of a problem that the legislation attempts to resolve.

However, those of us who were a part of the Liberal government, which the parliamentary secretary suggests was not as quick to address the problem as he would make it out to be, proposed through our consultations a five point plan. I am pleased the government has accepted those proposals.

That five point plan engages these words. If we think about it each one of the words, then we will get an appreciation of what it was that we on this side of the House wanted to accomplish and indeed planned to accomplish in legislation to address the movement of dangerous goods throughout the country.

First is the word “reinforce” as in reinforcing the existing emergency response assistance program. I say this, before I go on to the other four, because it is important not to raise the spectre of paranoia that the parliamentary secretary has visited upon us. He has suggested that the world might collapse if we stop to study the legislation for but a mere moment. I say this because a plan was already in place. There is a response mechanism, but it is to reinforce. This is the first key. It is the first sense we on this side of the House want everyone to appreciate, that we had already infused into the process.

The second one is “require”, requiring, obligating security training and screening. We can think about that again. We were talking a moment ago about reinforcing. Now we are talking about requiring. One requires training only when it is being applied voluntarily and perhaps not as assiduously as the rest of the public's interest might demand.

The third word is “enabling”. Enabling for us in the House always suggests, in fact it directs us, to presenting legislation as to enable us to put in place laws, regulations, agreements, protocols that must be followed. If we do not pass enabling legislation, the public watching this debate would say that we have good ideas but how. The legislation is intended to establish that how process. If we are to discuss this transportation of dangerous goods legislation, we have to think in terms of the effectiveness of the how in the enabling.

The fourth word is “amend”. We are talking about amending what? Again, I bring it back to what I said a moment ago. I do not want to preach an aura of paranoia, but in one where there is consistency, that we want some improvement. So we amend certain definitions in order to identify the obligations that will be imposed on individuals, on institutions and on corporate interests. If the legislation does not address the issue of amending certain items then it cannot be complete legislation.

Finally, the fifth word is “clarification”. Again, clarifying what is already there. So we are talking about clarifying an act to ensure that the applications of the rules surrounding the transportation of dangerous goods around the country, province to province, across the border, north to south, follows a particular protocol and that the protocol is enforced with uniformity throughout the entire country. There is a genuine and firm expectation by all Canadians that the rules will apply no matter where in the country those goods are being transported.

I know that the parliamentary secretary also said this is a joint jurisdiction. It is one where we have entered into an agreement with the provinces and the territories to transport goods. We will have carriage of certain responsibilities as we go along with the federal government having, for want of a better word, more exclusive responsibilities for air travel. But whenever we have goods that are moving from one area to another, and here I agree with the parliament secretary, we need to think about the one example which is very close to home for me, which was the Mississauga derailment in 1979. He is right. One quarter of a million people who had to be relocated, displaced, in order to address the issues that came forward out of that derailment are things that we should foresee, that we should anticipate, and that we should be prepared to put in action. What that requires is an emergency response plan and it has to be one that is consistent.

What I think I see in the legislation and what we will want to see as we examine it not just in debate and second reading but as this legislation moves its way through the system and goes on to second reading is an emergency response assistance program. A moment ago I gave an indication of five main themes and I will go back to those in a moment, but an emergency response plan must have the following items.

It has to give us an indication of anyone who is shipping the product, any corporation. We want to know exactly what actions those shippers would recommend or would take in the event of an accident. So we would want people to be proactive. We would want people to think in terms of what could go wrong, so that they could take those initiatives to correct it. If they are thinking in those terms, then they take the preventive measures up front. The legislation will be examined by our party with that in mind, that the emergency response action plan be already present by the shippers and in detail, so that we can have an indication that the problem has already been anticipated.

Second, what those shippers would do to assist local authorities in the event of an action that, they have already foreseen and attempted to prevent, would occur in any event. What action would they take post-accident? That plan would be very specific. It would include, for example, a third item. One might say the third item would seem to be common sense, why would we have to put it in legislation? Why would we have to legislate that an emergency response action plan actually have these details? Because apparently not everyone is abiding by the same rules.

That third item would be a detailed list of all the dangerous goods. Heaven forbid that we would have a derailment of a train or an accident involving a tractor trailer, or worse, and not know what is on board. We could end up having train derailments, as we have had in the last several years under the government's watch, and some of the toxic substances have polluted rivers and lakes and destroyed the ecosystems in the areas where the accidents occurred in some measure because there was no detailed plan of the types of toxic substances that were being transported.

The fourth item that we would demand, and that I think is resident in this legislation and it should be, and everyone who is watching this debate would want to know that an emergency response action plan would have this, would ask, what does the shipper suggest are its capabilities as a responder to an accident? What are its capabilities to address the problem? More specifically, what type of personnel, expertise, are the shippers prepared to put on the site immediately upon the occurrence of said accident? In other words, what can they contribute to the solution of a problem that emanated from their shipment?

Fifth, they must have the technology. One thing is having the personnel with the expertise, who would have been trained, and who would have been appropriately directed to the transport of these dangerous goods, but the second is the kind of technology that they would bring to bear on the scene of the accident in order to address the spillage of these dangerous goods, these toxic substances, and what that technology would be designed to do. In other words, nobody goes into any kind of transportation of dangerous goods without knowing exactly what the solutions would be if there were an accident.

Finally, they would have to have a system in place for communicating what to do, how to do it, and with whom. How to advise the local communities, the local authorities, the local jurisdictions, how to bring the local expertise to play in those environments.

We would expect that that would not happen just in terms of the transportation of goods, material goods and toxic substances, but we would expect that such plans would be in place and we expect that this legislation would foresee such plans for security risks.

I noted that one of the members from another of the opposition parties, a moment ago, was concerned that we might be a little bit too invasive in terms of training or requiring training of personnel here in Canada if we put in a standard that had to be commensurate with another country. From my perspective, the most important issue is to make sure that we have qualified people to handle these products. As the parliamentary secretary indicated, there are over, I think he said, 30 million shipments of dangerous goods currently taking place in the country, 30 million per year.

One might stop and think for a moment, if that many shipments are going through our territory, then we are putting the population at great risk. Not to play on words, but at the risk of descending into the paranoia that I was accusing the parliamentary secretary of perhaps engendering, this would be a cause for concern if we did not have the appropriate emergency response action plan that was detailed and appropriate, both in terms of personnel and in terms of the technology required to address it.

As I said, we to make sure that we have a system in place. I introduced the word “enable”, and the legislation would have to “enable” the establishment of an appropriate system, codified in regulations that would require that these dangerous goods be tracked during transport, that there would not be a moment where we would not know where those goods were. In other words, we would not accept, we would not tolerate that they would be lost, even for but a brief moment, a brief few minutes or more than that.

Second, when I talked about enabling, we would use security measures and interim orders to ensure that there would be compliance that would be in accordance with the Public Safety Act and other legislation designed to protect the livelihood and lives of individual Canadians and the communities in which they live.

Finally, in that enabling, we would have the development of a program that requires transportation security so that all of our shippers as well as the transport companies would be absolutely diligent in establishing a protocol that would ensure and guarantee the security of the movement of those goods. The obligations we would impose on the shippers would transfer themselves onto the transport agencies and companies that would move the products. We would not be any less diligent with them than we would be with those that actually send the product out.

I will repeat those five words again for everyone so that the legislation, at least from our party, will be examined in terms of those five words. First, reinforcement of the existing system because we want to illustrate that Canadians are not in danger at this moment. We want to improve what we think is a good system. Second, we would require security training and screening for all personnel who are handling and transporting these dangerous goods. Third, the regulations that would flow from this would be enabled by this legislation in order to have security throughout the entire country. Fourth, we would amend the definitions inherent in the legislation, especially with importers and defining the shippers who have the authority to move these products across the country. I think that amending those definitions gives us a clearer handle on the companies, products and associated security protocols that move product around the country. Finally, as I said earlier on, the clarification that this is legislation that is going to be applied throughout the entire country and, as a result, will be uniform in its application and its demands for all shippers and transport companies.

The Liberal Party is committed, as it has been since the inception under its watch of a study in 2002 that expanded in 2004, to come up with those five basic principles that I outlined through those five words as well as the six basic principles under an emergency response action plan that has served Canadians well to this point. We hope this will improve the legislation in order to serve them better as we go forward. We have been very much a part of that ongoing process and have, as the official opposition, been diligent in promoting the interests of Canadians and protecting their security. We want to be very helpful.

In our helpfulness on this very serious matter, we want to bring this legislation over to the next level of the parliamentary process, which is the committee system. From there, we hope to scrutinize it in the context of these items I have just outlined. If it were to pass that test, we would want to do it and do it quickly.

Yes, we are concerned that we would be compliant with all expectations of the world as it comes to Canada and, more particularly, British Columbia and Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. I do not think we owe ourselves any less. We want to be in a world where the rest of the globe sees us as prepared, not only athletically and financially but also in terms of security.

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I compliment the member opposite for giving the House an opportunity to see the dimensions of our discussion. With the facts he has given, he has recounted our dependency on all those issues that address international trade.

One is tempted to ask the obvious question. The government has a recognition of the importance of trade with the United States, in particular, and he mentions the NAFTA partners. Given the dependency of Canada's GDP on that bilateral exchange with the United States as well as the intra-company exchanges that contribute to our wealth, why would the government not have foreseen what is developing in the United States?

I am not talking about somebody being prescient. All one needed to do was to follow the primary campaigns and the election just completed in the United States to see that there were forces developing there that would inhibit our trade potential. Why does he think the government's belated language today is a good policy of inaction in the face of challenges that we must continually nurture?