Thank you.
I just wanted to comment in response to Mr. Woodworth's notes on this amendment. Continually bringing up only the example of a massive hydroelectric project in the past, one with years of controversy and legal difficulties, in a way brings forward a straw man example, when in fact what this Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights is more geared towards providing for are the many cases where smaller but still harmful examples of pollution of the environment are occurring, and really, across the country.
One of Canada's most respected experts on water, Dr. Karen Bakker from the University of British Columbia, spoke recently at an event that I hosted. She did a talk on the five myths about Canada's water. One of the myths is that our water is pristine. She proceeded to talk about the fact that it's actually the opposite in many parts of Canada. The fresh water is being contaminated by various kinds of pollution that citizens are unaware of, or when they're aware of it, they are very frustrated in their inability to actually protect that water.
An example is a lake on Vancouver Island. When I was up in the Campbell River area, a delegation of people was concerned about arsenic and other toxic materials going into that lake and their years of inability to find a government body that would take action on that.
I just want to point out that it's not really useful to test everything here against a massive hydroelectric project when the benefit of this legislation is that private citizens can become more involved and can be encouraged to think that they can make a difference in their area, in their region, where they see something happening that shouldn't be happening.
This particular amendment is pointing specifically to the possibility of a citizen bringing forward a potential action and giving the responsible body a chance to actually correct the problem or giving the federal government a chance to step in and take its responsibility. It can't always do that because of resource constraints, but this would nudge that action that needs to be taken, for example to protect fish habitat in a lake on Vancouver Island.
Thank you.