Mr. Speaker, members of the Conservative Party continue to struggle against the idea that they are little more than laggards when it comes to the environment. Whenever they make this claim, one of their senior ministers makes a public statement to remove any lingering doubts.
First, the Prime Minister suggested that it was difficult to predict next week's weather, so how could he possibly believe global warming was a threat to Canadians. Now the Minister of Public Safety was “begging for Big Al Gore's glacial melt when the mercury hit -24”.
The same minister went on to prove his utter misunderstanding of the pine beetle crisis and the impact that global warming had on it. I wonder if the same minister also still believes there is not enough evidence to prove that smoking actually causes cancer.
We are at the beginning of a legislative committee that will rewrite Bill C-30 and create what could be the most important environmental legislation in years. The NDP will fight hard to create hard targets and real timelines to ensure we change the course that Canada is on.
My fear is the Conservative members may have a lot of catching up to do. I strongly urge them to do much study over the Christmas holidays.