I had a 15-minute talk on CBC Radio the other morning about the Arctic Council and the inappropriate direction we may be taking with it. I think if you polled now in Iqaluit, you'd find there are a lot more people who understand what's going on with the Arctic Council. The issue is going to get bigger, and it's up to politicians in one respect to draw attention to it.
I've been in Parliament for seven years. There hasn't been one debate on the Arctic in the House of Commons, not one, zero. What we have here is a wilful denial on the part of the politicians that one of the most critical issues facing Canada and the world is what's happening to our Arctic.
Ms. Grant, you're familiar with the direction that ice melting is taking. You understand that most of the ice that's left is closer to Canada than to Russia. We've already felt the impacts on our weather system. U.S. scientists are saying that the jet stream is changing rapidly. What happens when the rest of the ice melts and we have open water up to the north pole from Canada? What's that going to do to our North American agricultural industries?