Mr. Speaker, the environment commissioner says that the government is not taking the leadership it said it would and that its international commitments require. It has a $4.5 billion investment in a dirty old pipeline and uses Orwellian language to say that to be a climate leader, we have to buy a pipeline.
I will relay to my colleague across the way the words of my friend and colleague, Snuneymuxw First Nation councillor Doug White III. He spoke on Tuesday night at a town hall I hosted on Kinder Morgan in my riding in Nanaimo, along with the member of Parliament for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.
Chief Doug White, former chief of Snuneymuxw First Nation, described the 160 years the Snuneymuxw First Nation has been fighting the effects of colonization and land-taking. He wrapped it up by saying that the economic model remains the same as it was 160 years ago. It is still rip and ship. You take a raw resource out of indigenous land, with no benefit to the local economy and local people, and then you ship it, unrefined, somewhere else, as it was 160 years ago. This is still this government's proposal.
I was very compelled by my colleague's imperative for the cost to our coastal indigenous communities. Can we not do better as a country?