Madam Speaker, I thank the member for deviating so wildly from his prepared notes but I need him to address a couple of specific items when we are talking about this, as we move forward to COP 11, this important international debate.
The government took a report from the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, a report that was endorsed by members of his own party, and took the maximum allotted time to respond. It must have diligently been going through its response. It responded by refusing, refuting and denying just about every recommendation the committee made.
The committee went through the issue of climate change witness by witness over a number of months. We devoted most of our time during the last sitting to make some very concrete proposals. We negotiated out from the different parties and interests across the country, along with members from all four corners of the House, and the government took the report and said, “Thanks anyway but no thanks”.
The government is now going to move over to the international stage in Montreal hoping to have some sort of ability to criticize other countries and yet, even in our own internal documents, the Auditor General and others, we are failing on our climate change plan.