Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments made by the member for Thornhill and was struck by the fact that she did not once mention the environment. Climate change is the biggest crisis of the 21st century and yet the government's fiscal plan, as presented in last week's budget, does nothing to take meaningful steps to address this problem.
I suppose a few people in the Conservative government would not be surprised by that since the Conservatives are still denying the science of climate change, but as a member of the Liberal Party and the official opposition I would have hoped that the member forThornhill would have at least recognized the importance of the issue.
On Friday, I had the great privilege of being invited into the classrooms of Miss Johnson and Mr. Shea at Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School in Hamilton Mountain. Some of their students had written to me earlier to urge the government to take concrete actions to fight climate change. We had a lively discussion about the environment and they told me what they were doing to fight climate change. They are in the process of undertaking the certification to become an ecoschool. They are having litterless lunches, planting trees, composting, picking up and recycling litter and turning off lights and computers when they are no longer needed.
However, they also had some really strong suggestions for what the government ought to be doing, and that is governments at all levels. Municipally, they wanted to see an anti-idling bylaw, a pesticide ban and a limit on the amount of garbage that people could put at the curb.
Provincially, they wanted to see an extension of GO Transit. They wanted the closure of coal-fired plants and standards to reduce the packaging around products.
Federally, they wanted to see initiatives that supported solar energy, wind turbines and fuel efficient cars.
This budget does not mention any of those initiatives.
A show that is currently on TV is called Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? On behalf of the students at Our Lady of Lourdes, I would like to ask the member for Thornhill whether she is smarter than a seventh grader and, if she is, can she commit today that she will vote against this budget that lets down an entire generation of young people who recognize what the government does not, which is that climate change should be our number one priority?