Mr. Speaker, I will recount for the House an episode from several years ago that really illustrates the current government's approach to information and science.
The minister's colleague, the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, was then the Minister of the Environment. Apparently a leak occurred in Environment Canada, according to the minister, who then summarily dispatched the RCMP to arrest a clerk who was responsible for clippings in the morning at the Department of the Environment. The clerk was led out in handcuffs in front of over 200 employees at a science-based department called Environment Canada.
Let us take this theme of environment and give this recount for Canadians: the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, gone; Sustainable Development Technology Canada, barely surviving; foundation for climate change research, eliminated; 700 and then 200 more positions announced at Environment Canada to be eliminated; the Global Environment Monitoring System, a UN partnership of decades, gone; Office of the National Science Advisor, gone; Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, PEARL, gone; the Experimental Lakes Area, gone.
That is just one area where the government has systematically dismantled decades of investment in order to prepare Canada and its citizens for the future of adapting to and mitigating climate change.