Mr. Speaker, I am here this evening to ask a question of the government regarding the environment, which may or may not be important to some people. For ours and our families' health, children, parents and grandparents, the environment issue is one of the most important issues with which we need to deal. It is one of the burning items which I have worked on over the last year.
I would like an explanation as to why the government has not dealt with the many environmental issues that are important to Canadians.
For six years I was actively involved in fighting SE2. The local government along with the provincial government in B.C. fought SE2. The federal government, from the former environment minister to the present one, were absent on this issue. There was no federal government presence in the fight on SE2.
SE2 is an electric generator plant located in the Seattle, Washington area which provides energy to the United States. This plant would have pumped tonnes of pollution into the Fraser Valley airshed, and the federal government did nothing. It was asked numerous times over the last six years to help us fight this issue. The good news is that through the help of the local and provincial governments in B.C. and Conservative members of Parliament, SE2 was defeated, but with no thanks to the federal government. Why did the government not fight this? It was the federal government's responsibility.
Why did the government not fight against Devils Lake? Why does Canada have the worst environmental record of the G-8 countries? Why have we had growing pollution levels over the last 12 years of this Liberal government? Why do we have untreated contaminated sites? Why do we still have raw sewage being dumped into our ocean? I asked that of the former environment minister yesterday and he said that was Liberal policy. He said that it was good environmental practice to dump raw sewage into our oceans.
Why do we not have any international air quality agreement with the United States for western Canada? We have an agreement for central and eastern Canada. Is that part of the western alienation policy of the Liberal Party?
Will the government please explain why it does not stand up for the environment?