Environment committee  Thank you very much for this privilege and for being invited to this committee. For the sake of time, since we have 10 minutes, I'll do my presentation in French. It's really a matter of fluency. I am an interventional cardiologist. I was head of the cardiac catheterization labo

Environment committee  Of course, it depends on the way it is done. We have all travelled. In medicine, we have the opportunity to go to conferences around the world. I've made this presentation in Beijing, New Delhi, Los Angeles, and Geneva. I can tell you that you have some examples that are beautie

Environment committee  We haven't, not that much. What you mention is very interesting. If we compare the rates of SO2 and NO2 and fine particles in Montreal—I know this region quite well—we see that from the seventies up to now, there's been a dramatic drop of SO2 and NO2. What were we breathing in t

Environment committee  It's very good that you point that out. I mentioned to you that we breathe about 20 kilograms of air a day. That's huge. That's enormous. The exchange of gases is especially fast, faster than that of solids and liquids, for sure. Since 1982 the Japanese government has consider

Environment committee  In fact, my second-last slide addressed that. First, I am convinced of the importance of a city's influence on our quality of life. In Canada, as in most countries, we have three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal. I believe the municipal world influences ou

Environment committee  I sincerely believe that this would be the case. That is why I talked about conversion. We certainly do not want to breathe in sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A recent study conducted in Montreal demonstrated th

Environment committee  There are many reasons to do this. There is, in particular, the pressure of climate change. Look what happened recently with Hurricane Sandy. I pay a great deal of attention to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to say. Every time that the IPCC presents its sc

Environment committee  You have asked a very relevant question. First of all, this is primarily an issue of knowledge. Although I am a cardiologist and a professor of medicine, five years ago I hardly knew anything about these things that I have presented. And yet, the science was there. You could say

Environment committee  First of all, you need good data. I think you had something exceptional here last week. It was at the Canadian Space Agency, in order to develop a protocol with the geomaticians at the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill University and the

Environment committee  The second thing that I think the Canadian government should do is to match their rules to what's going on. Obama just implemented a new rule to decrease vehicle emissions; I don't know the exact numbers, but I think we should go that way.

Environment committee  Of fossil fuels. I can tell you something. I have two hybrid cars, one for me and one for my wife. It cost me, I think, $80,000 more to get those two hybrid cars, and I had no support for that. Why? If you go anywhere in Europe, you get support for that. The only place you're

Environment committee  The point is that if we really think about it, we should support people in that endeavour. Also, if you want to transform something, it's difficult when it's the individual. I'm a doctor; it's easy for me to buy a hybrid, but for other people it's not that easy. Alternatively,

Environment committee  Those will be very good steps.

Environment committee  I will draw a parallel with what was done in Quebec. The Ministry of Health granted tens of millions of dollars to the Climate Change Action Plan, or CCAP. If I remember correctly, the Institut national de santé publique received approximately $36 million for all of Quebec to reg

Environment committee  You mean atherosclerosis.