Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize to you and the committee for being late. I was at another meeting and hoped to get here earlier.
I apologize to you, Minister.
I know this meeting went on for an hour or an hour and a half and that you didn't have very many opportunities to complete the questions that were asked by our colleagues across. You may want an opportunity to complete the answers to those questions, but first let me just make one comment, Minister.
Recently you were on the north shore of Lake Superior, at which you dedicated, along with the Prime Minister, 10,000 square kilometres of shoreline for the first marine conservation area in Canada. This is the substance of my question: as you stood there over that vast, expansive lake, did the thought occur to you of what role the largest freshwater lake in the world--which we are trying to protect, and we compliment you on that--plays in global warming? There's some real doubt in the minds of the scientists now with respect to precipitation, the loss of the water surface into the air surface, and so on.
I wonder if you've thought of that and if there's anything else we should be doing with respect to the water supplies that we have on all the Great Lakes in order to assist in your particular problem of global warming. Is there a connection?