Mr. Speaker, last week I had an informative meeting with the general mill manager of Zellstoff Celgar pulp mill in Castlegar, B.C. regarding the CN and CP railways.

Without instructions or protection, they spray the fields with deadly neurotoxins. In factories, they stand bare-footed in acid baths and colour our textiles.

Would it not be a lot better if instead we had entrepreneurs go into these areas, start up businesses, manufacturing plants and other things, give these people an education, help them to work in the knowledge industry or whatever and have them develop jobs instead of perpetuating the idea of a government taking money away from those who earn it and giving it to those for simple survival?

Some serious incongruity does remain, arising from concerns which I share: I refer to those Community countries in which the right to life is and remains solely and exclusively a statement of principle, where human life is extinguished indiscriminately as early as conception; I refer to the European consumers, upon whom the Charter confers a large number of new, important rights, yet who are being fed meat from the remnants of mad cows, and this is an example of that capitalism which grows fat on the back of the poor; I refer to those factory workers who have the right to a stable job, yet who have no future because, in the name of globalisation, their jobs have been moved to ...[+++]wherever it is least expensive to run the firm; I refer to students and university teachers and the right to education, and I refer to the crumbling, obsolete structures of many countries which renounce this duty; I refer, ladies and gentlemen, to the freedom of expression and the right to express an opinion, and I refer to the many people who are crammed into the European prisons solely because they think differently to others; I refer to the right to housing and to an acceptable quality of life; I refer to the young people who, in the name of often mafia-like interests, are deprived even of the right to love.

D. whereas, since staff could not enter the plant, it proved impossible to halt the nuclear criticality, or even to know what was happening, due to the enormous radiation levels, and whereas staff have been seriously injured, and whereas some of the public in the area were evacuated and may have been affected to some degree, as yet unknown, while the 313 000 people living within 10km were told to stay indoors with the windows closed,

D. whereas, since staff could not enter the plant, it proved impossible to halt the nuclear criticality, or even to know what was happening, due to the enormous radiation levels, and whereas staff have been seriously injured, and whereas some of the public in the area were evacuated and may have been affected to some degree, as yet unknown, while the 313 000 people living within 10km were told to stay indoors with the windows closed,