Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for being here.
To begin, I would like to congratulate the Association québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique and Nature Québec for presenting this document, which seems to me to be particularly informative. In it you take the same position as my party, the Bloc Québécois, and you confirm what we understand about this situation in Quebec.
I would like to go back to the question Mr. Tonks asked. I heard the presentation by the New Brunswick Minister of Natural Resources on Tuesday, and I would like my colleagues to think back to that too. We have to realize that the situations are very different from one province to another, if only because of the places where these activities take place.
Mr. Welt, you talked about the places where this exploration is being done, near the St. Lawrence, in our beautiful and most densely populated agricultural areas. The problem is not the same as elsewhere, in western Canada, where material is extracted in places where there is no population and the risks and consequences are not the same.
Mr. Bonin, by making the connection between sustainable development and the precautionary principle, you get right to the heart of the matter. That is really what drives this committee: perhaps some day shale gas will be developed, but not at any price, not at the price of the environment, and not just any way.
We want to eliminate our dependancy on oil, but we have to pay attention to how we get there. To us in the Bloc Québécois, it should be done as part of a truly green economy and with other resources, as you talked about a little, Mr. Bonin.
On Tuesday, Anthony R. Ingraffea of Cornell University in the United States told us that the technology does not seem to be advanced enough to guarantee that drilling for this resource, shale gas, can be done in a way that respects the environment. So that is the heart of the problem and what is worrying us.
I'm going to ask you three questions. Do you agree with us that exploration and exploitation are under sole provincial jurisdiction? So this debate has to be happening and the decisions have to be made in Quebec. We think the role of the Canadian government must be clear. It must pass on the information it has in its possession, but it is not up to it to impose standards or make uniform standards across Canada. We believe the federal government has to collaborate by investing massively in new technologies to develop greener energies.