Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to pose a question to my hon. colleague, who is the Alliance critic on the environment committee. I find his comments somewhat surprising because I know that in his heart he is an environmentalist and it is good to have his hard work on the environment committee.
This past summer, on behalf of the Minister of the Environment, I was able to make an announcement of $7.9 million into an organization called Fluxnet. It is doing the necessary scientific research to look at good agricultural practices, indeed to look at the very question the member raised in his comments, which is how we deal appropriately with carbon sinks. Clearly, the geography of Canada is somewhat unique. I commend the Minister of the Environment for taking an active and indeed a leadership role during the Kyoto protocol negotiations.
I would ask the member to comment on the fact that we have been consulting since 1997 with all of the stakeholders, including industry, some of which he referred to. Indeed, there are industries that are already ahead of the government in looking at how they can key into this new technology, as well as the new commerce and the potential of carbon trading that we are looking at.
There are four proposals put out by the Canadian government which can be picked up on the environment website. We will be coming out shortly with one of those in order to receive comments. I believe it was of the order of 2,500 people who were involved in the consultations that the member depicted as being very closed. I would see that as being fairly embracing.
I ask the member opposite, in the face of all of these efforts and the fact that I know he is a father and a grandfather, how can he justify not acting on this very important issue?