Madam Chair, the right to peaceful protest in this country is a constitutionally protected right. We want to ensure it's always respected. At the same time, Madam Chair, we recognize that the use of even less than lethal force can have significant impacts on people's safety. This is a highly regulated substance in Canada. It's prohibited for non-police use, and for the police it is and should be highly regulated. The RCMP have advised me they have not used tear gas in nine years. We'll continue to monitor it to ensure that peaceful protest is always respected.
Madam Chair, in 2012 the RCMP spent $14 million on 18 armoured personnel carriers. One's parked at the Nanaimo detachment. I can't imagine why we have weapons of war like this for policing civilians. Will the government rein in the RCMP budget and end wasteful spending on militarizing our civilian police forces?
Madam Chair, it's a very important tradition that our Canadian police are not militarized. At the same time, we've seen a number of tragedies when police have responded to situations in which people were armed with weapons designed for soldiers to kill soldiers, and they've been used to kill police officers. The militarization of our society, so strongly promoted by some, is the direct consequence of the militarization of the police. As we remove these weapons from our society and prohibit them, we'll make it safer for everyone and we can then move away from such a model of policing.
Madam Chair, the government spent $4.5 billion to buy an old, leaky pipeline. Since 1961, there have been 82 reported spills from the Trans Mountain pipeline. Over 1.5 million litres of crude oil has spilled into the surrounding environment. This weekend, the Trans Mountain pipeline leaked again, dumping 190,000 litres of oil. How much is this spill going to cost Canadian taxpayers to clean up? How much contingency funding has been budgeted to repair the environmental destruction from spills?