Madam Speaker, companies are polluting and are getting away with it, whether it is under provincial jurisdiction or federal jurisdiction, and that has to change.
The Liberal government is fond of saying that the economy and the environment go hand in hand. The saying should be that we cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy environment. Too often the government uses that to mean that we cannot take steps to protect the environment without concurrent steps to protect the short-term economic gains that actually put the environment at risk.
Natural resources are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and most resource companies act in a responsible manner and provide good jobs for Canadians and clean up after themselves. However, we must have regulations in place that ensure that corporations that pollute our environment pay for cleaning up that pollution and that environmental protection comes before the protection of corporate interests.