Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good afternoon. Mr. Speaker, in February of 1991, I tried to raise awareness about the environmental effect that littering has on the Northwest Territories. Yesterday, I was quite surprised, along with my colleagues, to hear the Minister, in response to a question that was asked about the recycling of aluminum cans, say it was not an environmental issue but more of a littering issue. I think those are one and the same.
After quite some time, Mr. Speaker, back in 1991, I managed to persuade the government to study the issue of a surcharge on glass bottles. It seemed easier to get consensus on the litter part of the issue, but I still think we have a problem with recycling. Recycling generates some returns. Clearing litter and simply storing it somewhere is not what we should be satisfied with. We should be more intent on effectively and efficiently recycling aluminum, particularly aluminum cans. I can't recall the numbers of cans that were mentioned, but it's somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 per year and then some. Those are the only ones we know of. We should be recycling these things and sending them back to the businesses that manufacture the cans or else reuse the aluminum for other purposes.
In April of 1991, I urged local business people to consider what was then a growing North American trend towards the recycling industry. At the time, we were spending about $2 billion to begin the recycling plants.
Mr. Speaker, I doubt that the 200 million tonnes of North American refuse that was being disposed of back in 1991 has been reduced satisfactorily since then. I think it has grown even more, certainly here in the territories with the transportation systems we have now. We're getting in more bottles and more cans. As a matter of fact, they're using more aluminum cans now than pop bottles. At the time I had suggested that if there were a deposit on the can at purchase, there would be some incentive for children or a business to collect these cans and return them for a refund, thus getting them off the street.
The system of getting them out of the territories, Mr. Speaker, is really easy. Yesterday I was surprised to hear the Minister say that the only way out is to fly them out. That's not true. I don't think there's a community in the territories that isn't accessible either by road or by water. A lot of times we have containers coming in -- that's what they use to ship stuff now, is these big containers -- that stay in the community all winter and they're emptied of their goods. Those could be used to return aluminum to southern Canada on either the sealift, the return barges or the return trucks.
So there's an answer to a question which was asked yesterday and no solution was provided by this government towards recycling. I think it's well past the time, Mr. Speaker, that this government take some prompt, effective measures to rectify the situation of recycling. I'll have some questions in question period for the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause