Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question.
It is always a pleasure to address the member in the House on such important issues. I would like to start with her original question that she put in the House on March 2.
She made a claim that the government would “slash the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency's budget by 43%”. I hope she has read the budget since then to see that in fact not only was the entire funding allocation for this agency renewed, but there was increased allocation for participant funding. Once again, this demonstrates our government's commitment to ensuring that there is rigour in environmental assessment in opposition to what she has been saying tonight.
The one thing I picked up on was the member spoke with great disdain around the terminology “big oil companies”. She uses it like a term of derision. I find that very interesting because her leader is in Alberta today. He is touring the oil sands in Fort McMurray, which is a great wealth of natural resources. I hope she will listen to some of the comments he made. He did agree that this was a great driver of the Canadian economy. I certainly hope we will see a change in tune from him rather than these divisive comments pitting workers in Alberta against workers in Ontario.
Instead of acknowledging that this is a resource that should be developed for all Canadians, she talked at the end of her speech about ensuring that it was around for generations to come. I agree with her. We do need to ensure that we see this develop sustainably. That is why our government has implemented what has been called a world-class monitoring system for the oil sands. The commissioner for the environment has called it robust. He has called it leading and world class. It is a step in the right direction. We have great partnership with the province of Alberta on this.
Also, there are technologies being developed by industry in partnership with government to ensure that those resources are developed and that land is reclaimed on the back end.
I think my colleague is originally from Alberta. I hope she would visit her hometown, as her leader has done, to see the big oil companies. Frankly, I hope I do not hear that term used by her party as derision. We should be talking about the energy sector as a driver of the economy.
I will close with some quotes that came out of our subcommittee on finance reviewing the changes in the budget implementation act, which are designed to ensure we have environmental sustainability with economic growth. We want to ensure that businesses have predictability and timeliness in process but that we still ensure the rigour. In the environmental assessment, we feel the bill does that.
We asked the commissioner of the environment about the screening level assessments. Right now screening level assessments comprise 99% of the environmental assessments that are conducted through the Environmental Assessment Agency. I asked him if he would characterize us transferring resources from 99% of these screenings, 94% of which he is on the record saying have little to no environmental impact at all, to focus on larger projects to ensure we have resources within the agency and to ensure that those big projects, which the member talked about, are adequately concluded.
We are on the right track. I certainly hope she will support our measures in this regard.