Madam Speaker, the tar sands are an enormous environmental problem for Canada, but they also, in putting the tar sands together in a fashion that works, are a great opportunity as well for economic development.
What has happened with the tar sands is they started off as very mediocre oil development in this world and have escalated to a point where, with the price of oil, they are very profitable and everyone wants in on it. The developers have been given free licence to deal with the environment.
We need to change that now and put proper guidelines, procedures and laws in place that will protect the environment and will ensure that these tar sands, which are an enormous resource for Canada, are handled correctly. Instead the government is playing this game with our environment rather than dealing with it. That is the problem.