I agree that the economy and the environment go hand in hand, but it is actually an inverse relationship. Wealthier and richer countries have better environments, and a country gets richer and wealthier by adopting conservative economic principles. We believe in free trade. We believe in open markets. We believe in property rights. We have all of the factors in place to create wealth, and once wealth is created, we can then implement the technology to improve the environment.
I will give the House a specific example.
In 1989, the Brian Mulroney government implemented pulp and paper effluent regulations that mandated all pulp and paper plants in this country to install $25-million waste water treatment plants. This was the average cost. I had the honour of running one of those plants after it was built. Does the member think a poor country, such as the socialistic Venezuela that so many left-wing Canadians praise, would ever put in a waste water treatment plant? Has anybody ever been to China to look at the environmental quality there?
The sulphur dioxide case is another one. An economist named Kuznets established a relationship between a country's income and its environmental quality. When the United States, for example, was getting richer in the early 1970s, an inflection point was reached. The country kept getting richer and sulphur dioxide emissions kept going down.
Let us all get rich and save the environment.