Thank you, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity to once again discuss this invitation to the Minister of the Environment.
The Minister of the Environment has, how shall we say, been more of an apologist than a minister. Nevertheless, he does have jurisdictional responsibility in the area of energy. He certainly has not been, how should we say, as enthusiastic as I would wish with respect to the cost to the environment on the energy sector. It is a not insignificant cost. When the motion talks about the benefits and isolates the conversation to the benefits, you don't actually find out what the liabilities are.
Mr. Chair, I don't know whether you were a small businessman in your previous life, but I ran a law practice. In a law practice you have assets and you have liabilities. You have income and you have expenses. This motion is actually on the left side of the agenda. It's not on the right side of the agenda or the right side of the page. On this motion we don't actually get to what the liabilities and costs are of Canada being an “energy superpower”. If there is any minister who should be charged with the responsibility of explaining to Canadians and to parliamentarians that there are costs to these endeavours, then it actually should be the Minister of the Environment.
Again, I made the same point with respect to the international trade minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Natural Resources—that they should be included, each one of them—and now the Minister of the Environment should be included in the motion as a person of great interest to this committee. This is a committee that is to discuss all sides of the energy equation. He is an appropriate witness to have here. I would put him in the motion above all others.