Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to question my colleague who I sit with on the natural resources committee. The minister had his chance to speak. I asked him a question in relation to some of his issues. He came back at me, claiming that I was somehow standing in the way of progress on renewable clean energy for northern communities, something with which I have put 10 years of my life into and been very successful. I particularly want the minister to understand that he is disparaging someone who works in that field and, from the ground up, has put renewable energy into northern communities.
My question for my hon. colleague is on carbon sequestration. The report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development showed that the carbon sequestration program delivered by Natural Resources Canada was a resounding failure. The program was supposed to initiate 3.5 megatons of carbon reductions and it came up with .03 megatons. The expenditures of $25 million were directed toward five projects and industry only picked up on one of them, the project in Weyburn. The industry knows that this technique is far from developed and its estimates puts it at $100 a tonne to sequester CO2 from any fossil fuel development. This is what has been reported in the natural resources committee.
What does my hon. colleague think of a minister who does not come to the committee and does not get the information about these very important subjects that form the basis of where we will go with energy in the future?