Mr. Speaker, I always like it when a member speaks from the perspective of technical understanding. My colleague is a biologist and a returning member to the House who has quite a bit of experience both in the field and in this place.
Perhaps the member could elaborate a bit on the principles of conservative environmentalism. It is a principle that he has spoken of a lot in the House, and he has had speaking engagements on it. I think it goes to the very heart of the bill, which is that we can be good stewards of the environment as well as good stewards of the economy. The Minister of Environment is always making the case that the two go hand in hand, but the Liberals ignore the economy. It is the side of the coin that never gets looked at. It is the side of the coin the government continues to ignore. I would really appreciate it if the member could elaborate on the principles of conservative environmentalism.
I agree that the economy and the environment go hand in hand, but it is actually an inverse relationship. Wealthier and richer countries have better environments, and a country gets richer and wealthier by adopting conservative economic principles. We believe in free trade. We believe in open markets. We believe in property rights. We have all of the factors in place to create wealth, and once wealth is created, we can then implement the technology to improve the environment.
I will give the House a specific example.
In 1989, the Brian Mulroney government implemented pulp and paper effluent regulations that mandated all pulp and paper plants in this country to install $25-million waste water treatment plants. This was the average cost. I had the honour of running one of those plants after it was built. Does the member think a poor country, such as the socialistic Venezuela that so many left-wing Canadians praise, would ever put in a waste water treatment plant? Has anybody ever been to China to look at the environmental quality there?
The sulphur dioxide case is another one. An economist named Kuznets established a relationship between a country's income and its environmental quality. When the United States, for example, was getting richer in the early 1970s, an inflection point was reached. The country kept getting richer and sulphur dioxide emissions kept going down.
Let us all get rich and save the environment.