Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his tireless work on the environment. I know he works extremely hard in his riding, but he also works very hard in the House to make sure we are doing everything we can to protect the environment and tackle climate change. I also want to recognize Senator Mitchell and the senators who worked really hard to improve the bill.
I absolutely agree that this shows that the way we reformed the Senate is working. We have listened to amendments that improve and strengthen legislation, which is a very good thing. Look at the opportunity we have. We have an opportunity to attract $500 billion in investment to this country. Last year, we had the largest foreign direct investment in our history on record. We created a million jobs. We have the lowest unemployment rate in four decades.
Now we have an environmental assessment process that will help attract the investment we want to create jobs and opportunities all over the country. Having independence in the way decisions are made, the approach taken with an impact assessment agency, makes a huge difference. It increases the certainty, predictability and respect for the system. It creates a system that, quite frankly, is going to do a much better job than the system that was gutted under the Harper government, where good projects could not go ahead. They just ended up in court.