Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands, I am going to have to do this evening, as I am filling in my for my esteemed colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources.
I listened with interest to the member's remarks and her efforts in myth-busting with respect to Kinder Morgan. I do not know that she cited sources for any of this information, but what I do know is that this government has taken a very rigorous approach to its approval of pipelines. It has taken a science-based approach. We are, in fact, debating further enhancements, but this government, in a surfeit of caution, added a layer of suspenders and a belt, so to speak, to the approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline by appointing a review panel. That review panel, coupled with the NEB approval, led the government to approve this pipeline, and I think the rest is history.
There are certainly ferocious arguments being made on the side of environmentalists. There are certainly ferocious arguments being made, for example, by Conservatives in favour of the pipeline. We choose to take these projects on their merits, using science and evidence, and based on the knowledge that the environment and the economy are not a choice. We can have the prosperity generated by a modern natural resource industry, one that has multiple points of access to global markets and that does not leave hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars on the table, or jobs on the table, or take money out of the Canadian economy.
We choose to have that growth, all the while making sure that there are environmental safeguards that go with the construction of such projects. There is also the more general framework on climate change our government is putting forward, whereby we tax carbon pollution, taxing something we do not want and hopefully seeing a return. The proceeds of that will foster activities we do want, whether it be innovation in the green economy, whether it be income, or whether it be other sorts of things, as provincial governments and others see fit.
I think we have struck a very useful, constructive, and productive balance with respect to the Kinder Morgan pipeline. I do not know that the arguments on either side of the extremes of this argument are particularly helpful. We have a science-based, evidence-based approach that seeks to reconcile the environment and the economy, create prosperity for Canadians, create jobs in our energy sector and beyond, and make sure that Canada retains its leadership role as a participant in the war on climate change, and more generally, as a leader in the vanguard of environmental protection the world over.