Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Tomorrow, we will mark World Environment Day. I would like to celebrate rather than mark it, but the circumstances aren't right.
Today, we learn that the government is taking advantage of the pandemic to quietly authorize 100 oil and gas exploration drilling projects east of Newfoundland. That's 100 drilling projects without environmental assessments. That's 100 drilling projects to support the economy of the past, when the pandemic is giving us an opportunity to focus economic recovery on the future.
However, the government has made a public commitment to a green economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. This cannot be reconciled with allowing 100 oil and gas exploration drilling projects to go ahead without environmental assessments.
The pandemic has proven that the federal government had the means to respond massively when it felt it was facing a crisis. The pandemic has proven that, if the government took the climate crisis seriously, it would be able to act.
It has to make a choice for the future. The public's confidence depends on it, as does the cordiality of its relations with the Bloc Québécois and Quebec.