Mr. Speaker, we are debating Bill C-298, the perfluorooctane sulfonate virtual elimination act. At the beginning of the bill reference is made to, “Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada”. It is important that since we are paying respect to Her Majesty, we congratulate Her Majesty on her 80th birthday. We recently saw on the news all the fanfare that was associated with her birthday. She has been a long reigning monarch and has done great service to our dominion, along with many of the other countries in the Commonwealth. Her Majesty is a fine royal example for our assembly, as well as for many others.
I was recently at Spruce Meadows when His Royal Highness Prince Edward was there. He was presenting the Duke of Edinburgh awards. It was a lovely event. He was handing out awards to young people. The awards encourage young people, I believe starting at the age of 14, to participate in volunteer activities. As long as they have completed an expedition along with other aspects of a certain amount of community hours, by the time they turn 25 years of age, they are eligible for the Duke of Edinburgh award. That is something that is highly valuable and encourages young people to do volunteer work in their community. I congratulate members of the royal family in terms of their involvement and support for that program.
I will now turn to the intricacies of Bill C-298 which relates to the Conservative Party's environment policy. I am very supportive of what our party and government has done on this matter, in that we are pursuing a made in Canada policy.
There are many others in the House who support the idea for Canada's environmental policies to be made in other places. For example, when it comes to the Kyoto accord, they would prefer that our policies were made in Japan, or that in a sense we pay homage to Russia with regard to environmental policies by shipping credits and money to those countries that have worse environmental records than Canada's record. Some people in this place in their support for some of the Kyoto provisions would have us send money and credits and whatnot to China. That is a serious problem. We have to be mindful that it is far better to support a made in Canada policy.
Another country that has an incredible number of people along with some policies that could be questioned is India. India is a large parliamentary democracy. We want to make sure that our policies are made in Canada.
What we are talking about with Bill C-298 is the idea that we will be dealing with waste water treatment here in Canada. We will be dealing with landfills here in Canada. We are not dealing with exporting credits or moneys, Canadian taxpayer dollars, to other jurisdictions in order for them to look after some of their concerns. The environment is a global concern, but we must look at what we can do here in our own backyard before we look overseas internationally.
We can suggest things to those other countries as they can suggest things to us, but it is very important that we look after Canada first. As a matter of fact, as legislators, Canada is our primary responsibility. It is important that we are mindful of that, that we look after our own backyard. We must do the best for our children and grandchildren.