Mr. Speaker, as the parliamentary secretary well knows, the oil sands monitoring program is not an arm's length body, despite the recommendation from scientists that it be arm's length. Therefore, it is the Conservative government that will be writing the press releases.
Also, I note that the results of the monitoring actually come in after the next federal election. Is that not a wonderful coincidence for the government?
Recently, the Prime Minister was in Davos and he actually talked about investments in science and technology. He said that they produced poor results and were “a significant problem for our country”. He cannot possibly be referring to Environment Canada scientists who are recipients of the Order of Canada, Nobel prize winners, discoverers of the hole in the Arctic ozone, inventors of the UV index. He cannot possibly be talking about these brilliant scientists. Therefore, I wonder why the Prime Minister cuts anything to do with science here at home and then goes abroad to denigrate the good name of our internationally renowned scientists?