Peter Kent

[The Environment, June 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, clean and cleaner water is a priority of our government, certainly for Environment Canada. We have invested significantly in our Great Lakes, in Lake Simcoe, in Lake Winnipeg. We continue to maintain the highest standards of water quality monitoring across the country, leaving to the provinces and municipalities water quantity because they are the ones that regulate both metering and pricing.

This government does not pay lip service to the environment, as the previous Liberal government did. We are getting things done.

[The Environment, June 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, let me assure my colleague that it is.

He is indeed correct. The Experimental Lakes Area program, over the decades, has greatly informed both treaty-making as well as public consumer goods; it played a big part in the acid rain treaty.

At the same time, we want to put the research where the challenges are. Environment Canada is moving its scientists farther west, to examine the acidification of lakes in western Canada.

[The Environment, June 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I can only characterize the content of my colleague's question as sanctimonious twaddle.

This government is protecting the environment at the same time as it protects Canadian jobs and the economy. A responsible resource development is the hallmark of the budget, which we are in the course of passing, a budget which is receiving more hours of debate than any budget in recent times. This government is getting it done.

[The Environment, June 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is in no position to lecture us about the environment.

As this is Environment Week, it is a great occasion for Canadians to celebrate what this government is doing for the environment, for cleaner air, for cleaner water, for regulation of chemicals, for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, Parks Canada and for responsible resource development.

[Artifacts, May 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as I responded to my hon. friend some weeks ago, these historical artifacts do belong in the regions and they belong in places where they are available, not only for the public, but for historians and archeologists to study them. At the moment, there are some challenges with regard to storage space and exhibition space.

I reassure my friend that Parks Canada is working to find appropriate locations in the province of Quebec, as close to their natural locations as possible.

[The Environment, May 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleague opposite that legislative improvements to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in 2010 did go some distance toward eliminating duplication in environmental assessments. However, we would build on that with Bill C-38 and we have introduced timelines. We would also contemporize processes under the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. We would strengthen and improve what was already in place.

[The Environment, May 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague forgets that on the first day that the subcommittee met to consider Bill C-38, all three ministers met, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Minister of Natural Resources and I. We provided two hours of enlightenment to an opposition that was hard-challenged to come up with questions material to the subcommittee's work.

[The Environment, May 30th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I remarked that the environment commissioner's greenhouse gas inventory numbers were out of date. I said that he was under-informed on the federal contaminated sites program. His office has since come back and as much as admitted that fact and suggested that it would like new information to update and do a supplementary report.

With regard to the numbers he offered yesterday to the committee regarding his estimate of the number of federal assessments under the CEAA 2012, his numbers were wrong.

[The Environment, May 30th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in that highly unlikely eventuality, there would be no environmental assessments because the NDP has made it clear that it opposes all responsible resource development and all resource jobs.

[The Environment, May 30th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell my hon. colleague that if the NDP were ever, in the unlikely eventuality, to form government, there would not be any assessments--