Mr. Speaker, this week Canada is celebrating Environment Week. While we take this time every year to acknowledge the importance of a healthy environment to Canadians, this year we also take pride in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Department of the Environment. Therefore it is both a time to reflect on our successes as a nation and take stock of the challenges that still confront communities across Canada.
There is a very simple equation we must understand. A healthy environment will add to the health of our families and communities, while an unhealthy environment will hurt us all.
Pollution Probe states that 6 per cent of all respiratory admissions to Canadian hospitals are smog related. Doctors and health practitioners in urban areas tell us smog and air pollution cause increased health problems to heart and respiratory disease sufferers.
Yesterday in the air summit organized by the government of metropolitan Toronto this was very clear. It also costs our health care system over a billion dollars a year, conservatively, for these respiratory ailments. Polluted drinking water has an even more noticeable cause and effect.
So is it not time we all started making healthy choices for our environment and for ourselves? All Canadians and all levels of government need to subscribe to strong national standards of environmental quality for all Canadians in all regions of this great country.
After all, what we are really talking about is making a choice for healthy neighbourhoods; a choice for clean water to drink; a choice for beaches where our children can swim; and a choice for clean air.
This is a choice we have to work for. It is a choice in lifestyle, a choice in how we recycle and reuse. It involves how we get to work as well as how we work, and of course how we use our resources to promote our economy without sacrificing a renewable resource and source of jobs and wealth for our citizens.
Everyday Canadians are making those choices and there are a great many individuals among us who are working to promote a healthier Canadian environment. A few of those individuals are with us today in the public gallery who moments ago the House and the Chair recognized.
Today, I have the pleasure of announcing the winners of Canada's Healthy Environment Awards. We had over 200 nominees this year, all of whom have shown a dedication to the environment which is quite remarkable.
Of course I cannot mention them all by name, but they range in age from their teens to their seventies. They are both municipal and corporate leaders as well as students and teachers. To give an idea of the kinds of achievements we are celebrating here today, let me point briefly to the youth leadership winners.
Thirteen-year old Jean-Dominic Lévesque-René of Quebec has worked hard to promote awareness about the link between pesticides and cancer, while secondary student Sara McEachern from British Columbia helped produce a video about what children can do to save planet earth. These are but two examples of the choices young Canadians have made to improve Canada's environment.
The environmental citizens we honour today, the environmental patriots really, have proven that irrespective of their walks of life all Canadians are empowered to make an individual contribution to a healthier and more sustainable environment.
We talk in the House about all the things government should do for the environment but we tend to forget that it is the individual who often makes the critical difference. Without great fanfare or publicity they do it quietly, powerfully and effectively. They are people who take responsibility for their neighbourhoods and ultimately their country.
Governments must therefore do their part to promote this brand of environmental citizenship. The House will be dealing with a number of important environmental concerns in the coming days and months, not the least of which will be a revitalized Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the main tool box Canada has at its disposition in terms of controlling what goes in our air and in our water.
There is also endangered species legislation which Canadians tell us constantly at all levels is important to preserve because of the animals and plants we care about. If we do not take care of them we are not taking care of ourselves.
We are also maintaining the international leadership Canada has been able to forge worldwide, which means honouring our commitments and taking leadership roles on issues such as climate change.
We will also continue our environmental partnership with the United States and Mexico in a meeting of the Commission for Environmental Co-operation in Toronto at the end of June.
In many ways our environment goes straight to the heart of what makes us a nation. Our respect and love for the land and sea is part of our national and natural heritage. It is a source of national pride and it continues to attract people from all corners of the globe. Consequently we must plan for the future in order to protect this irreplaceable resource.
The Prime Minister said the environment must become one of the major priorities for this government as we prepare for the 21st century.
Please join me in congratulating some of the Canadians with us here today who are helping to make that pledge a reality.