Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from the electors in Kingston and the Islands who call upon the Government of Canada to assume direct responsibility through Environment Canada for monitoring, in a long-term way, climate change in the Canadian Arctic and to make those data freely available to interested researchers.
This is especially urgent now because we know there will be imminent termination of funding for year-round operations at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory and getting long-term data from measurements like that will be very important for understanding what will happen to the Arctic when climate change occurs. We know that the Arctic will be most affected and, if we want to have sovereignty over the Arctic, we should be understanding of what is happening up there.
I believe the government would support this because the Minister of the Environment once stood up in question period and said, “Our government believes that what gets measured gets done.” I hope the government will commit to measuring the effects of climate change in the Arctic.